{"id":9137,"date":"2026-03-03T17:25:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/harvard-avi-loeb-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:25:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:25:38","slug":"harvard-avi-loeb-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/harvard-avi-loeb-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard Professor Says AI Users Are Losing Cognitive Abilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is perhaps best known for raising eyebrows with public suggestions that various<\/a> stellar<\/a> phenomena<\/a> could be evidence of extraterrestrial civilization. It\u2019s controversial, to be sure \u2014 but if nothing else, at least Loeb\u2019s using his own brain, at a time when dependence on AI chatbots has never been higher.<\/p>\n

In a recent essay on his personal blog<\/a>, the Harvard professor lamented the mental decay among the AI users in his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently, I noticed that some people around me are starting to lose their cognitive abilities as a result of excessive use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms, such as\u00a0ChatGPT,\u00a0Claude\u00a0or\u00a0Gemini,\u201d Loeb wrote. \u201cThis phenomenon resembles muscle loss from excessive use of public transportation as a substitute for walking. In academia, the only reliable way of testing the cognitive abilities of students right now is by placing them in a Faraday cage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevermind studies showing that public transit users walk a tremendous amount<\/a> \u2014 a much better analogue would be drivers<\/a>, really \u2014 Loeb is underscoring a real and growing concern by many researchers and educators.<\/p>\n

Since the rise of AI chatbots over the past few years, there have been plenty of research papers<\/a>, anecdotal evidence<\/a>, and grim predictions<\/a> outlining this exact phenomenon. As one 2025 study<\/a> by Swiss researcher Michael Gerlich found, frequent use of AI tools can cause critical thinking abilities to atrophy, resulting in a \u201ccognitive cost\u201d among human users.<\/p>\n

As the number of AI users ticks up, the long-term risks of systemic intellectual debt only become more apparent. As recent research<\/a> by the Pew Research Center found, a massive number of school-aged teens are using AI to do their homework, with heavy use concentrated among minority and low-income students.<\/p>\n

As far as Loeb is concerned, he writes that the threat of this kind of societal cognitive impairment makes it important to push back against the idea of AI systems as a sort of magical stand-in for the human brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegarding AI as similar to the beauty of the human mind is just like putting lipstick on a pig,\u201d he pontificates. \u201cI am much more excited about the potential to discover truly alien intelligence from another star.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on AI: <\/strong>A Staggering Proportion of High School Kids Are Using AI to Do Their Homework, Which Is Probably Not Going to End Well
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Harvard Professor Says AI Users Are Losing Cognitive Abilities<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is perhaps best known for raising eyebrows with public suggestions that various stellar phenomena could be evidence of extraterrestrial civilization. It\u2019s controversial, to be sure \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3449,3844,3885,5515],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-brain","category-health-medicine","category-machine-learning","category-neuroscience-and-brain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}