S1E57: How Gen AI like ChatGPT enhances critical thinking, instead of making us lazy

Aug 12, 2025

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We even invite ChatGPT to be a 'guest' in this episode with our host and two human guests.

Synopsis: Every second Wednesday of the month, The Straits Times takes a hard look at Singapore's social issues of the day with guests.

Preliminary findings from a recent MIT study in June in the US, concluded that people using just generative AI (Gen AI) tools such as ChatGPT, became lazier with each subsequent essay they wrote.

The study, conducted in Boston, categorised three groups of test subjects aged 18 to 39 according to the tools that they used: ChatGPT, Google or no tools.

The brain activity of these writers were scanned across 32 regions of their brain. The result found that ChatGPT users had the lowest brain activity, and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels,” according to the study.

But the way ChatGPT is used was critical, as the study found that test subjects who used ChatGPT only after writing the essays on their own, had significant increases in brain connectivity.

Just how can ChatGPT be used to enhance productivity without making us lazy? In this episode, ST assistant podcast editor Lynda Hong unpacks the issues and looks at how her human guests maintain the balance between optimising the use of ChatGPT and becoming over-reliant on it.

Her guests are Shahrman Nayan, creative director of OneDash22, a local video production company and an avid user of Gen AI for his work; and Cheryl Chia, founder of BrainFit, an education centre for children and young adults, building their cognitive, thinking, and study skills through programmes grounded in scientific approaches.

We also invite ChatGPT to be a 'guest' in this podcast discussion.

Highlights (click/tap above):

6:00 How can youths use ChatGPT without becoming lazy

13:14 "I can make people lazier if they use me to avoid thinking critically": ChatGPT

15:21 Cognitive functions like memory and concentration have been going down: Cheryl

29:04 How young people can use Gen AI to improve critical thinking

37:03 How Shahrman uses Gen AI like ChatGPT to get his colleagues to produce creative work

Host: Lynda Hong (lyndahong@sph.com.sg)

Produced and edited by: Hadyu Rahim, Rebekah Chia and Natasha Liew

Executive producers: Ernest Luis & Lynda Hong

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