AI use causing ‘boiling frog’ effect on human brain, study warns

New research has found that relying on artificial intelligence to complete tasks erodes people’s ability to make the effort to think for themselves and makes them more likely to give up.

This could leave us with a “boiling frog” scenario in which our brains’ abilities become increasingly compromised as we place greater emphasis on artificial intelligence. study warns.

An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford, MIT, UCLA and Carnegie Mellon said their research provides evidence of two worrying consequences of using AI to help complete tasks: “Less retention and deterioration in unaided performance.”

Researchers asked people to perform a variety of different tasks, including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension.

they found “After just 10 minutes of AI-assisted problem solving, people who lost access to AI performed worse and gave up more often than those who never used it.”

Explaining that the gains from the use of artificial intelligence “incur heavy cognitive costs”, the team warned that their findings “raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily artificial intelligence use on human persistence and reasoning”.

They said: “These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is the foundation of skill acquisition and one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.

“We warn that if such effects accumulate with continued use of AI, current AI systems optimized only for short-term usefulness could lead to the erosion of the human capabilities they are meant to support.”

While the effects may seem small to society at the moment, the team suggested that a cumulative effect over years could have serious consequences, undermining our own ability to concentrate and learn.

“The tasks examined here, such as fraction arithmetic and reading comprehension, may seem transferable to tools such as calculators, but conceptual mastery of these skills is a developmental prerequisite. Without these skills, higher-order competencies such as algebra or critical reasoning cannot be achieved,” they said.

If AI erodes the motivation and determination needed to sustain long-term learning, the effects “will accumulate over years and will be difficult to reverse once they become visible.”

“This is similar to the ‘boiling frog’ effect, where each incremental action feels costless until the cumulative impact becomes difficult to address,” they said.

The “boiling frog” scenario is a cautionary metaphor in which frogs exposed to boiling water jump out quickly, while frogs placed in cold water and slowly heated do not perceive the danger they are in until they are boiled alive.

Co-author of the study, Grace Liu from the Department of Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said: Independent The study shows that more research is needed on human interaction with artificial intelligences.

He said: “The concern is about what cognitive scientists call ‘desired challenges,’ that is, the productive challenge that builds skill over time. If AI routinely eliminates that challenge, people might get the right answer in the moment but develop less robust independent ability.”

“This isn’t about AI making us ‘stupid’; the issue is more nuanced than that. But how important this effect is at scale and in different contexts needs further research.”

He said people shouldn’t have “catastrophic” concerns about the findings, but that it should be seen as “a signal that we need to be more conscious of how and when to use AI assistance, especially in learning contexts.”

He added: “This is not a reason to avoid AI, but it is a reason to design and use these tools carefully.”