Artificial intelligence use rots your brain! As someone who has spent a lot of my life wrassling with words while writing papers, grants, and educational materials, I totally understand the allure of generative AI. Wouldn't it be great to just have an AI write all this for me? Beyond the now well-known issue of quality control, where the AI starts making things up (BS-ing, in my view), there is an even more important risk. Recent studies, notably this one by Kosmyna et al., "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task," show that using AI to write papers leads to reduced interaction between brain regions that leads to impairments in later tasks. This tracks with another paper I saw earlier (but don't have the citation for) describing shrinking of brain regions in people who used a lot of AI. Basically, the brain is a "use it or lose it" kind of place. If you don't keep writing (or whatever) the brain will not continue to maintain the connections it needs to do the task.
This is obviously an issue for older people, who need to maintain cognitive function or risk serious cognitive impairment, but I worry particularly about younger people, especially kids in school. It is said that most students in high school are using AI. But one thing about wrassling with words — it's that very process that forces you to clarify your thoughts. Writing forces you to think more deeply. What will be the consequences for cognitive function over the lifespan for young people, whose brains are still developing, if they are depending on AI now?