Artificial intelligence can be helpful for a lot of things, depending on how you’re using it. A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab has found that using AI can affect your brain activity. For their study, the team asked 54 students to write essays using either their own brains, a search engine or ChatGPT.
Participants spent three sessions writing their essays with their assigned tools while wearing EEG headsets to measure their brain activity. Then they switched for one final session, with those who had been using AI going without it and those who’d been going AI-free now using it. The essays were scored by a human group and a specially trained AI, and the researchers interviewed each student about their experience.
The group using their brains showed more engagement, better memory and a higher sense of ownership over their work than those using AI. The research team notes that their study has yet to be peer-reviewed and was limited only to essay writing. It is also worth noting that the study did not specify how the students should use AI, which could affect their brain activity depending on whether they were using it to enhance their own thinking or to do the thinking for them.
