--- title: "Study Finds AI Use Eats Away at Users’ Confidence in Their Own Brains" description: "A new study out of Middlesex University argues that the ultimate effects on an AI users' brain come down to how they use it." date: "2026-04-18" modified: "2026-04-18" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/health-medicine/ai-cognition-study" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Brain" - "Health & Medicine" - "Mental Health" - "Studies" --- # Study Finds AI Use Eats Away at Users’ Confidence in Their Own Brains ![A cartoonish red brain with large, googly eyes and thin, stick-like arms and legs is looking at a smartphone held up in front of it. The background is bright yellow with a grid pattern and an orange circle behind the phone.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* Researchers are growing increasingly suspicious that outsourcing intellectual tasks to AI is causing a range of cognitive deficits. A new study adds a wrinkle worth paying attention to: that use of the bots can eat away at users' faith in their own abilities, resulting in lower confidence in their own independent reasoning. The new peer-reviewed study, published in the [journal *Technology, Mind and Behavior*]() and [flagged by *TIME*](), found that those who showed a heavy reliance on AI were more likely to admit chatbots were "thinking" for them — and seem to show decreased confidence in their own ideas. By the same token, participants who took control over their AI's output by editing, questioning, or scrapping it showed a greater confidence and sense of ownership over the final output, even though the tools used were the same. As the study's author Sarah Baldeo — a PhD candidate in AI and neuroscience at Middlesex University — told *TIME*, the ultimate cognitive effects "depends on your interaction style." "When we look at brain activity contingent on how people choose to use the tool, we can see increases or decreases," Baldeo said. "It really doesn't have to do with the tool itself." That finding lines up with the "boiling frog study" we [covered earlier this week](). That yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, by researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, claimed to have found the first causal evidence that AI can rapidly degrade users' intellectual abilities, particularly when we use the tech for "reasoning-intensive" work. During [that study](), participants in the experimental group were given AI access to complete a series of equations. The researchers then pulled the plug in the middle of their work, forcing them to continue without it. Those who had been abandoned by their AI chatbots saw rapid declines in reasoning ability, as well as a swift drop in willingness to follow-through and complete the math tasks. Both studies converge on the same core mechanism: *ho*w you use AI is an important factor in determining whether it harms your cognitive ability. Basically, they argue that offloading all of your work to the machine degrades your capacity for independent reasoning, while using AI as a supplement may help to preserve it. Whether you're measuring confidence or raw reasoning, both pieces of research seem to pose an important question: are you using AI to help you think, or is AI doing the thinking for you? **More on AI:** *[College Students Losing Ability to Participate in Class Discussions Due to Offloading Their Thinking to AI]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()