{"id":216337,"date":"2025-06-20T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T03:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/using-chatgpt-to-write-essays-may-be-eroding-critical-thinking-skills"},"modified":"2025-06-20T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T03:14:10","slug":"using-chatgpt-to-write-essays-may-be-eroding-critical-thinking-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/using-chatgpt-to-write-essays-may-be-eroding-critical-thinking-skills","title":{"rendered":"Using ChatGPT to write essays may be eroding critical thinking skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/using-chatgpt-to-write-essays-may-be-eroding-critical-thinking-skills2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of neurologists and AI specialists at MIT\u2019s Media Lab has led a study looking into the brain impacts of large language model (LLM) use among people who engage with them for study or work. They report evidence that the use of LLMs may lead to an erosion of critical thinking skills. In their <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2506.08872\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a>, posted on the <i>arXiv<\/i> preprint server, the researchers asked groups of volunteers to write essays while connected to EEG monitors.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few years, the use of LLMs such as ChatGPT has become commonplace. Some use them for fun, while others use them to help with school or work responsibilities, and the team at MIT wondered what sort of impact LLM use might have on the brain.<\/p>\n<p>To find out, they recruited 54 volunteers. The initial group was then split into three <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/small+groups\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">small groups<\/a>, all of whom were asked to write a 20-minute <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/essay\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">essay<\/a> on the topic of philanthropy\u2014one group was asked to use ChatGPT for help, the second was asked to use Google Search, and the third \u201cBrain-only\u201d group was given no tools or resources at all. The participants remained in these same groups for three writing sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of neurologists and AI specialists at MIT\u2019s Media Lab has led a study looking into the brain impacts of large language model (LLM) use among people who engage with them for study or work. They report evidence that the use of LLMs may lead to an erosion of critical thinking skills. In their [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}