The Take 2025 in Review: Is ChatGPT hurting our critical thinking skills?
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Dec 29, 2025 
Celia Ford, a science journalist and former neuroscientist, delves into how AI tools, like ChatGPT, might dull our critical thinking skills. She highlights a noteworthy MIT study showing brain activity differences between using AI for writing versus self-creation. Celia warns that while AI can boost productivity, it risks making us passive consumers of information. She proposes that we should engage in tasks ourselves before relying on AI to preserve our cognitive abilities.
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Passive Consumption Replaces Active Thinking
- Using ChatGPT turns users from active searchers into passive consumers of information.
- That shift reduces the mental effort involved in sifting and forming answers, which may harm long-term critical thinking.
MIT Essay Experiment With EEG
- In an MIT study, participants wrote essays under three conditions: unaided, with Google, or with ChatGPT while wearing EEG headsets.
- Those using ChatGPT struggled to remember their own writing and showed different brain activity than others.
AI Produces Homogenized Responses
- Essays produced with LLMs showed a homogenizing effect, converging toward average internet responses.
- That makes AI-written responses feel soulless and reduces individual originality.