In an experiment, 61% of people were allowed to use ChatGPT to get direct answers. So basically, they didn’t have to think, they just saw the question and the answer. Another 27% could use AI only for hints, not full answers. And the remaining 12% had to rely only on their own brain, no AI at all.

Later, when AI was taken away and everyone had to solve the problems on their own, the 61% group (who depended fully on AI) performed the worst. Even worse than the group that never used AI, or the one that used it only for hints.

I read about this experiment in a recent paper. Researchers from MIT, Oxford, UCLA, and other institutes ran it with 1,222 people, using fraction-based problems.

After about 10 to 15 minutes of solving problems, they took ChatGPT away. Then they asked everyone to solve a few more problems on their own.

The AI group did measurably worse. Their solve rate dropped. Their skip rate went up.

Ten to fifteen minutes. That's all it took.

Now I want to flag something before going further. This isn't the usual "AI is making us dumb" article. We've all read those. They're usually based on surveys or interviews or somebody's vibe.

This is different. This is a randomized controlled trial. The same kind of design they use to test medicines. Causal evidence. Not correlational.