The writer is a theoretical neuroscientist and author of ‘Robot-Proof’
Generative AI is, by design, a machine for producing the feeling of competence without the substance of it. To see what sort of impact this is having on our ability to think, I asked a classroom of students to wear EEG headsets while they worked on the same assignment with the same AI agent. From the front of the room they looked indistinguishable: heads down, screens glowing, fingers tapping. Inside their skulls, however, two very different stories were unfolding.
In most of the students, the EEG measuring their brain activity revealed that the high-frequency “gamma” oscillations that mark cognitive effort collapsed within minutes of using the AI agent. Their neural state drifted towards something closer to watching TV than solving maths problems.