Cognitive scientists found using AI for just 10 minutes impairs brain performance

Critics of AI caution that as a relatively new technology, its long-term effects on the human brain are still unknown. But a new study shows that AI could be dangerous even in the short-term, with sessions of AI use only 10 minutes long leading to impaired brain performance. The study, conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, MIT, and UCLA, challenged participants to complete a set of fraction-based math problems. Half the group was tasked to solve the problems on their own, while the other half was given access to an AI assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5 model—only to have that AI helper removed without warning for the test’s final three problems. Though the AI-assisted test takers had a higher solve rate than the control group for most of the experiment, once the AI was removed, that number plummeted. Once both groups were operating independently, the AI-assisted group had a solve rate approximately 20% lower than the control group. Additionally, the AI-assisted group had a much higher rate of simply skipping questions once their access to AI was removed, opting to abandon problems twice as often as the control group. The participants only had access to their AI assistants for around 10 minutes, suggesting that building reliance on AI even for such a short time stunted people’s ability to fall back on their own problem-solving skills. The researchers also conducted a follow-up experiment with the same format to test reading comprehension instead of math skills. The results were largely the same, except that access to AI didn’t give the assisted group an edge in the first portion of the exam. The way you use AI matters While depending on and then losing access to AI assistance led to lower problem-solving rates overall, there was diversity within the study’s experimental groups, depending on how they utilized their AI assistants. Those who asked the AI for direct solutions saw the largest decline in solve rate and the largest increase in skip rate. The