Writing using artificial intelligence (AI) can save you a lot of time. But what effect does it have on your ability to think?

In “Should we fear cognitive debt?” a podcast interview by Deep Work author Cal Newport, either author Brad Stulberg or Newport said that we sacrifice cognitive fitness when we use AI to write. Also, “my thinking is what I’m paid for,” and AI can’t communicate that, so professional writers shouldn’t use AI to draft their writing.

Here’s a link to the MIT study, “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” that underlay their comments about AI-assisted writing. The study compared users of the large language models (LLM) that are key to AI. It concluded

Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and