A new study using ChatGPT has yielded concerning results.

OpenAI’s chatbot was the subject of a new study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab, and the results are being described as “scary.”

The paper began by dividing 54 people between the ages of 18 to 39 in Boston into three groups and asking them to write numerous SAT essays over a four month period.

One group used ChatGPT, another used Google’s search engine, and the third weren’t allowed either when writing the essays, per Unilad.

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Researchers then hooked up the groups to an electroencephalogram (EEG), used for measuring electrical activity in their brains.

Of all three groups, ChatGPT users were found to display the lowest level of brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”

Users became more and more lazy as the essays went on, resulting in copy-pasting text directly from ChatGPT by the end of the trial.

When the ChatGPT users were asked to start writing essays just using their own brain power, they “showed reduced alpha and beta connectivity, indicating under-engagement,” the study notes.

Lead author Nataliya Kosmyna shared that long-term brain development may be negatively impacted by the use of AI.

“What really motivated me to put it out now before waiting for a full peer review is that I am afraid in 6-8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental,” she said, via Time Magazine.

“Developing brains are at the highest risk.”

“It was more like, ‘just give me the essay, refine this sentence, edit it, and I’m done’,” she explained.

The people that were unable to use tools to write essays showed the highest neural connectivity, especially in areas of creativity ideation, memory load and semantic processing.

The Google Search group also displayed active brain function, meaning only AI users had bad results across the board.

The AI group also couldn’t remember what the essay was about.

“The task was executed, and you could say that it was efficient and convenient. But as we show in the paper, you basically didn’t integrate any of it into your memory networks,” the lead scientist noted.

Similarly, a Harvard study from May found that generative AI made people more productive, but less motivated.

“Education on how we use these tools, and promoting the fact that your brain does need to develop in a more analog way, is absolutely critical. We need to have active legislation in sync and more importantly, be testing these tools before we implement them,” Nataliya Kosmyna noted.

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