Cognitive debt or methodological deficit? A critique of the MIT study (2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22456/1807-8583.150573Keywords:
artificial intelligence, cognition, research methodology, critical education, neuroscienceAbstract
This article offers a critical analysis of the study Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task, published in 2025 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which associates the use of AI with reduced cognitive engagement and memory retention. It argues that such an interpretation stems not only from technical shortcomings but from an epistemological deficit that reduces cognition to neural patterns, disregarding its social, cultural, and mediated dimensions. The study’s limitations include the homogeneity of the sample, the artificiality of the task (20-minute essay), the lack of longitudinal follow-up, and the restriction of electroencephalogram in assessing complex processes. Contrary to the media narrative of “dumbing down,” the effects observed are presented as immediate and situated. In dialogue with authors such as Simondon, Régis, and Varela, it is argued that AI entails a reorganization rather than a loss of cognition.
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