The Stupidity Trap: How to Use AI to Rewire Your Brain (Not Rot It)

A dangerous question is now starting to hit the airwaves: Is AI making us stupid?

This weekend, a story in the Guardian by Sophie McBain commented on a recent report by MIT that suggested that AI is making us cognitively weaker, potentially creating what one expert calls a "stupidogenic society." The MIT study which involved 54 participants and has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that people using ChatGPT to write essays displayed significantly reduced brain activity and couldn't recall what they'd just written. Teachers report students who can produce passable work but lack genuine understanding. One preliminary study found a correlation between frequent AI use and lower critical-thinking scores. (Read my previous post on the same MIT study here [When AI Goes Dark: Why the Human Operating System Still Matters].)

The Guardian article paints a dystopian picture of a generation growing up unable to think independently, their cognitive capabilities atrophied by tools designed to think for them. Unlike previous technologies that augmented specific functions, such as writing which freed us from memorization and calculators that did long division for us, the study warns that by the time we realize our minds are no longer our own, because AI does the thinking for us, it may be too late.

It's a compelling narrative. It's also dangerously incomplete.

The Fundamental Misunderstanding

The MIT study at the heart of this panic measures the wrong thing. Yes, brain activity decreases when people use ChatGPT to write essays. But that's exactly the point of using tools. When you use a calculator, your mental arithmetic circuits show less activity. Does that mean calculators are making you unable to think mathematically? Of course not. It means you're freed to focus on what the numbers mean rather than the mechanical process of computation.

The study conflates "reduced brain activity during a specific task" with "permanent cognitive decline." These are not the same thing. The real question isn't whether the brain shows less activity when we use tools, it's what we're doing with the cognitive resources we've freed up.

Human intelligence has always been distributed and tool-mediated. A medieval scholar with perfect memory but no books is less intellectually capable than a modern student with Google. The question has never been whether we use external cognitive aids. It's how we use them, passively or actively, reactively or intentionally.

Intentionality is Authority

I believe we're at an inflection point. With intentional practice, humans can use AI as a catalyst for cognitive evolution, rewiring our brains to think bigger and better. Not by passively consuming AI outputs, but by deliberately developing new cognitive capabilities that emerge from human-AI collaboration.

This isn't wishful thinking, it's how neuroplasticity works. When taxi drivers navigate complex city routes, their hippocampi enlarge. When musicians practice, their motor cortices reorganize. When we engage with new cognitive challenges, our brains adapt. The question isn't whether AI will change our brains—it will. The question is whether we'll direct that change intentionally or let it happen passively.

The people who thrive in the AI age won't be those who resist AI to preserve some imagined cognitive purity. They'll be the ones who deliberately cultivate new skills: knowing what questions to ask, how to verify outputs, when to dig deeper, how to synthesize AI-generated insights with human judgment and intuition.

Consider what becomes possible with intentional AI use. I can now test ten hypotheses in the time it used to take to test one. I can explore intellectual territories I'd never have time to map manually. I'm not outsourcing thinking, I'm scaling it. When lower-level cognitive processes are automated, higher-level executive functions can develop more fully.

The Devil's Advocate Has a Point

But here's where I have to be honest. The strongest argument against my approach to intentionality isn't that it doesn’t work with AI. It's that intentionality is rare and requires work, and the human brain looks for shortcuts. 

Smartphones changed our lives.  But most people don't use smartphones intentionally. They have become addicted to them, e.g. doomscrolling. The overwhelming majority of people will use AI passively, as a shortcut. And that may prevent them from realizing the real benefit that the invention of AI offers. Developing new cognitive capabilities.

Students who use ChatGPT to write assignments without engaging with the material, and workers who accept AI outputs without critical evaluation, will create a generation of people that believe they don't need to understand anything as long as they can prompt effectively.

When (according to the Guardian article) 92% of university students use AI, and 20% have used it to write entire assignments, we're talking about a potential systemic cognitive offloading during the critical years when deep thinking skills should be developing. These students won't magically acquire critical thinking abilities they never built once they enter the workforce.

If the first answer AI provides is the answer that anchors your thinking, you may never develop the lateral, creative thinking that produces breakthrough innovations. You'll explore variations on machine-generated themes rather than making the unexpected connections that define human creativity. But this is not how it has to be for you. 

The Stakes Demand Leadership

So where does this leave us? The devil's advocate reveals the real challenge. Most people will use AI passively. Right now, the discourse is binary. AI skeptics say ban it, resist it, protect ourselves from technological harm. AI enthusiasts say adopt it uncritically, trust that innovation solves all problems. Neither position is useful. haveLAB has developed a third way (Second Brain) that you can integrate into your AI usage, to not only use AI better, but to use it to develop and enhance your critical thinking skills. 

Passive consumption driven by the attention economy is already happening. The default path leads exactly where the Guardian article warns, cognitive decline, loss of critical thinking, a generation unable to function independently.

How Can You Lead

Leading doesn't mean converting everyone. It never has. Most people read tabloids, not literature. Most people eat junk food, not nutritious meals. The existence of food deserts doesn't mean we shouldn't advocate for nutrition.

The audience for intentional AI use is those of you reading this blog, and those you work with. Parents who want better for their kids. Educators who recognize the crisis and want solutions. Professionals who sense they could be thinking bigger. Anyone who feels the cognitive dissonance between AI's promise and their experience of it.

The Real Question

The MIT researcher is measuring what happens when humans encounter AI in realistic conditions. The results are alarming, and we should take them seriously. But the response shouldn't be fear and restriction. It should be education and intention.

The question isn't whether AI will change our brains. It's whether we'll direct that change or surrender to it. Whether we'll develop the frameworks for intentional use or accept passive consumption as inevitable. Whether we'll build the infrastructure for cognitive sovereignty or watch it atrophy. We're not rewiring our brains into stupidity. But we could be, unless we choose differently. The technology itself is neutral. Our collective response to it is not.

The Guardian article is right about the danger. But it's wrong about the solution. We don't need to resist AI. We need to master it. And that starts with recognizing that cognitive evolution isn't something that happens to us, it's something we direct, deliberately, through the choices we make about how we engage with the tools that shape our minds. The real stupidity would be failing to make that choice at all.

Watch a 25 minute free webinar about haveLAB’s approach to intentionally rewiring your brain.