Turning to artificial intelligence to complete tasks may be eroding people's ability to think for themselves and making them more likely to give up, according to new research. An international team from the University of Oxford, MIT, UCLA and Carnegie Mellon found that using AI can lead to 'reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance'.
The researchers asked participants to carry out tasks including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension. They discovered that after just ten minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it.
Describing the gains from using AI as coming 'at a heavy cognitive cost', the team warned that their findings 'raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning'. They cautioned that if such effects accumulate, current AI systems 'optimised only for short-term helpfulness' risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.
The study draws a parallel with the 'boiling frog' metaphor, where each incremental act of relying on AI feels costless until the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming. Co-author Grace Liu from Carnegie Mellon said the concern is about 'desirable difficulties' – the productive struggle that builds skill over time. She added that people should not be 'catastrophically' concerned but should design and use AI tools more intentionally, particularly in learning contexts.
