The impact of generative intelligence on critical thinking, self-reported reductions in cognitive effort, and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers
We know that technology is becoming an essential part of everyday life, but this dependency could be physically changing our brains. Studies indicate that every time we outsource a function to technology we run the risk of losing the ability to perform it ourselves.
The impact can already be observed in tasks such as memorization and spatial navigation. Before, people memorized phone numbers and could orient themselves without the need for GPS, sometimes by asking people on the street. Today, a large part of these functions has been delegated to applications, which has led to a proven decline in spatial memory.
Research indicates that the excessive use of technology is correlated with accelerated cognitive aging and in some cases could even increase the risk of Alzheimer's, now a new concern arises, dependence on Artificial Intelligence could be affecting our ability to think critically, generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Copilot, rock and Deepseek are becoming indispensable tools in everyday life, offering quick responses and simplifying tasks.
The adoption of these technologies has already surpassed the speed with which the Internet adapted, but what are the cognitive consequences of this advance, if we delegate more and more functions to the we are already atrophying our own reasoning skills, Microsoft researchers explored this question in a recent study, interviewing 319 knowledge workers and analyzing 936 tasks to understand how AI affected critical thinking effort.
The results were clear, the more people trusted the AI the less they used critical thinking and the greater the confidence in their own abilities the more critical thinking they employed, the thinking process changed, instead of solving problems alone, the participants only checked the accuracy of the AI's answers.
This new behavior raises a worrying question: are we stopping thinking and making our own decisions? The idea that we can externalize cognitive processes to focus on more complex problems has always been an argument in favor of the use of technology. However, AI could be eliminating even the complex problems that we previously considered essential to human cognition.
Technology has always influenced the way we think and interact with the world, but Artificial Intelligence could be accelerating this process in an unprecedented way, we will still be able to solve problems with the help of algorithms or we will just be pressing buttons and accepting prefabricated answers.
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