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AI’s impact on cognitive ability: MIT study reveals more troubling data

New research found relying too much on AI negatively affected people’s ability to identify misinformation.

Yet another study shows that the more you let artificial intelligence do the thinking for you, the less capable you are on your own.

This time, researchers at MIT tested how relying on AI to tell fake news apart from the truth impacted users’ ability to identify misinformation on their own.

Treating AI chatbots as a news source is increasingly common, particularly among young people. Recent reports from Pew Research Center show that one in five teenagers in the U.S. get their news from chatbots, while one in five adults under age 50 report using AI for their news at least sometimes.

The study out of the MIT Media Lab tracked 67 participants over four weeks as they evaluated news headlines and images, saying whether they believed they were real or fake, sometimes with the assistance of an AI chatbot. When they had the chatbot’s help, participants were 21% more accurate in finding fake news with the AI’s help—but at the end of the study, a troubling side effect emerged.

Posted on: 6/20/2026 1:15:02 PM


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