A first of its kind study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows some concerning findings on how AI affects brain activity as all Ohio State University students, starting with this fall’s freshman class, will be trained to use AI in their majors.
The study found those who use ChatGPT to help write essays showed less brain activity than those who used only their brain. Ohio State University did not study how artificial intelligence usage affects learning before rolling out plans to make every student "AI fluent."
Ohio State wants to embed AI into the core of the undergraduate curriculum, equipping students with the ability to not only use AI tools, but to understand, question and innovate with them.
MIT researcher Nataliya Kosmyna spoke to WOSU about her study and its results. While the study was small and hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, it's the first to study how AI could impact learning.
MIT study showed lower brain activity in AI users and 'soulless' essays
Kosmyna and her team invited 54 college students between the ages of 18 and 34 from the Boston area to participate in the study. They were split into three groups and assigned to complete SAT-style essays while their brain activity was monitored.
“One group was allowed to use ChatGPT only. So they couldn't use anything else. Another group was allowed to use search engines…and then the third group was able to use only their brain," Kosmyna said.
These essays weren’t complicated. The participants got to choose a prompt each time and had only 20 minutes to write them in each of the three sessions.
“They didn't need any prior knowledge," Kosmyna said. "So the topics were things like 'Is there perfect society?' or 'What is happiness?' and things like that.”
The results were concerning, but not as much as some initial news reporting would have you believe. Some reports claimed the study showed using ChatGPT causes laziness and makes you dumb.
“(They wrote) 'Oh there is a brain rot, there is some laziness, drop in IQ, brain went on vacation,'" Kosymyna explained. "Some of those were pretty funny, but obviously some were pretty ridiculous, and all actually are incorrect.”
The study found that while these students wrote the chatter happening in the brain between neurons went down as each tool was introduced. Students using ChatGPT showed the lowest brain activity.
The ChatGPT participants couldn’t even accurately recall their own essays.
Those essays were also reviewed by English teachers, who didn’t know what technology was used for each. The AI papers were panned as unoriginal or as the English teachers put it: "soulless."
A smaller number of students took part in a fourth session with the same essay prompts they had already written about. But this time with an added twist.
The students who originally used ChatGPT had to do the work all on their own. The ones who just used their brains were allowed to supplement their work with ChatGPT.
That fourth test — with a smaller sample size of 18 people who volunteered from the previous tests — is what Kosmyna said showed the most interesting results.
The group who started using ChatGPT after writing the essays on their own at first showed much higher levels of brain activity.
Kosmyna said this shows the timing of when these tools are introduced could be very critical. The AI could potentially create a better outcome, if the participants already knew the fundamentals of a subject.
Ohio State didn't study AI before rolling out plan to encourage usage among freshmen in the Class of 2029 and every subsequent class.
Now, Ohio State expects students to be fluent in AI usage by the time they graduate, starting with the incoming freshman class.
However, Ohio’s flagship university didn’t conduct academic studies before making this choice. Instead, what OSU is doing is encouraging students to use AI while building guardrails, using an evidence-based approach and studying whether it ultimately adds value to a student's education.
OSU Vice Provost Anika Anthony with Ohio State’s Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning told WOSU now is the time for universities to begin implementing this technology.
“We’re really needing to respond to just this rapid growth in data and AI tools," Anthony said.
Anthony said the AI fluency initiative is needed because students are already using AI. She said some studies show 70% to 100% of students are using the technology in some form.
The university outlined its goals for learning outcomes in a mid-July presentation to a Board of Trustees committee on how to help faculty integrate AI into their teaching while keeping these learning outcomes in mind. These learning outcomes will serve as the basis to assess student learning.
Anthony said teaching students how to use AI needs to be done regardless of whether AI causes students to use their brains less, which is known as "cognitive debt." She said guardrails will be key to ensuring students are prepared for their career fields.
“There may be standardized tests within the academic program that students are taking. So there may be practice tests that students may eventually have to take to earn a license or to earn a certificate within a specific field," Anthony said.
Anthony also said OSU wants to make sure students develop comfort and skills with using AI beyond their undergraduate program or their time at Ohio State.
Faculty and teachers will still be monitoring and reporting data on how well students are doing. Essentially, OSU will be conducting a university-wide experiment on its more than 45,000 undergraduate students to see how AI impacts learning.
“There will be some institutional research as a part of a broad formative evaluation so that as this effort continues, the university can continuously improve and make sure that this is doing good," Anthony said.
OSU plans to release its first report on the AI fluency initiative in December.
Kosmyna said banning AI outright isn’t the answer and she understands why schools like OSU are pushing forward with programs like this. But, Kosmyna said there needs to be more studies on how AI impacts learning and potential benefits and harms that may come with using AI.
“These crucial stages of, you know, practice, repetition. Making mistakes, because you can learn from those mistakes, developing the deeper understanding is essential, especially if you want to ensure that your student is developing some genuine expertise,” Kosmyna said.
Kosmyna wants more studies to be done, especially on other age groups. She said the results of the study show more concerns for K-12 students using AI.
