"AI isn't making us more productive. It's making us cognitively bankrupt."

"MIT [that's the real one, not the imposter in Manukau] just completed the first brain scan study of ChatGPT users & the results are terrifying. Turns out, AI isn't making us more productive. It's making us cognitively bankrupt. 

"Here's what 4 months of data revealed: (hint: we've been measuring productivity all wrong)

"83.3% of ChatGPT users couldn't quote from essays they wrote minutes earlier. Let that sink in. You write something, hit save, and your brain has already forgotten it because ChatGPT did the thinking.

"Brain scans revealed the damage: neural connections collapsed from 79 to just 42. That's a 47% reduction in brain connectivity. If your computer lost half its processing power, you'd call it broken. That's what's happening to ChatGPT users' brains....

"Here's the terrifying part: When researchers forced ChatGPT users to write without AI, they performed worse than people who never used AI at all. It's not just dependency. It's cognitive atrophy. Like a muscle that's forgotten how to work.

"The MIT team used EEG brain scans on 54 participants for 4 months. They tracked alpha waves (creative processing), beta waves (active thinking), and neural connectivity patterns. This isn't opinion. It's measurable brain damage from AI overuse.

"The productivity paradox nobody talks about: Yes, ChatGPT makes you 60% faster at completing tasks. But it reduces the 'germane cognitive load' needed for actual learning by 32%. You're trading long-term brain capacity for short-term speed.... Many recent studies underscore the same problem, including this one by Microsoft:

"MIT researchers call this 'cognitive debt' - like technical debt, but for your brain. Every shortcut you take with AI creates interest payments in lost thinking ability. And just like financial debt, the bill comes due eventually. But there's good news...

"Because session 4 of the study revealed something interesting: People with strong cognitive baselines showed HIGHER neural connectivity when using AI than chronic users. But chronic AI users forced to work without it? They performed worse than people who never used AI at all.

"The solution isn't to ban AI. It's to use it strategically. ... The first brain scan study of AI users just showed us the stakes. Choose wisely."

~ Alex Vacca