Is AI Making You Stoopid?
Warning Signs That AI May Be Doing Too Much of Your Thinking –
and Seven Ways to Take Your Mind Back
A Cognitive Playbook from The Barber Shop
By Jim Barber | 2026
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The following Playbook cover contains a summary of the Playbook, the sources for the studies cited in the Playbook, and Frequently Asked Questions about AI and cognitive fitness in general. The Playbook itself is downloadable at no charge, no registration required.
The Playbook in a Nutshell
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work, learn, create, and solve problems. And while AI can make us enormously more productive, there’s a potential downside that deserves our attention.
The more thinking we routinely hand over to AI, the less exercise we’re giving our own minds.
Does that mean AI is making us stupid? Probably not. But there’s growing reason to be concerned about cognitive dependence, the habit of relying on technology to perform mental tasks we could, and sometimes should, perform ourselves.
The solution isn’t to stop using AI. It’s to strengthen our own cognitive abilities so we can become better partners with increasingly capable technology.
Is AI Making You Stoopid? explores this challenge and offers seven practical ways to protect and improve your cognitive fitness.
Your goal isn’t to use less AI. Your goal is to use your mind more, and to use more of your mind.
Is AI Making You Stoopid?
Want the whole story? Download the free Cognitive Playbook and discover why your mind may need an update, what emerging research suggests about AI and human thinking, and seven ways to keep your mental faculties sharp.
It’s a short, entertaining read. No technical expertise required. And there won’t be a test afterward.
Download the complete PDF, including seven ways to take your mind back.
Seven Ways to Take Your Mind Back
You don’t have to abandon AI to keep your mind in shape. You just have to make sure you’re still doing some of the thinking.
Here are the seven practices explored in the Playbook.
- Don’t Outsource the Easy Stuff. When a task is simple enough to do yourself, occasionally skip the AI shortcut and give your brain some exercise.
- Draft First, Prompt Second. Develop your own ideas before asking AI to expand, organize, or polish them.
- Exercise Your Mind Every Day. Make cognitive exercise part of your routine, just as you would physical exercise.
- Struggle Before You Summon AI. Spend some time wrestling with a difficult problem before asking a machine to solve it.
- Challenge the Machine. Question AI-generated answers. Look for errors, weak reasoning, and assumptions that deserve closer examination.
- Pick Up a Pen. When practical, write or sketch by hand to engage your mind in a different way.
- Keep Knowledge in Your Head. Don’t let instant access to information replace your own understanding of important concepts.
These aren’t rules against using artificial intelligence. They’re ways to make sure you’re exercising your own intelligence while you use it.
What Does the Research Say?
The concern about cognitive dependence isn’t based entirely on speculation. Researchers are beginning to investigate what happens when people rely on generative AI to perform tasks that previously required more independent mental effort.
The findings are worth paying attention to, although they don’t establish that AI causes permanent cognitive decline.
AI Assistance and Mathematics Learning
A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined nearly 1,000 high school mathematics students. Students using a conventional AI assistant performed better during practice but scored 17% worse on subsequent assessments without AI.
Interestingly, students using an AI tutor designed to encourage independent thinking largely avoided this problem.
Source: Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics (2025).
AI and Long-Term Memory
A randomized study involving 120 university students compared ChatGPT-assisted studying with traditional study methods.
On a surprise knowledge-retention test 45 days later, the ChatGPT-assisted group averaged 57.5% correct, compared with 68.5% for the traditional-learning group.
Only 85 participants completed the follow-up test, so the results warrant some caution.
Source: ChatGPT as a cognitive crutch: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial on knowledge retention (2025).
AI Assistance and Professional Skill Development
Anthropic conducted a randomized experiment involving 52 software engineers learning an unfamiliar programming library.
Participants using AI assistance averaged approximately 50% on a follow-up knowledge assessment, compared with 67% for participants working without AI.
However, the researchers also found that how people used AI mattered. Those who asked conceptual questions and sought explanations often demonstrated better understanding than participants who primarily used AI to generate code.
Source: How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills (2026).
AI and Critical Thinking at Work
Researchers from Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University surveyed 319 knowledge workers about their use of generative AI.
They found that greater confidence in AI was associated with less self-reported critical-thinking effort. They also found that AI changed the nature of critical thinking, shifting some effort toward verification, integration, and oversight.
Because the study relied on self-reported experiences, it cannot establish that AI caused a decline in critical-thinking ability.
Source: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking (2025).
What Can We Conclude?
These studies don’t prove that AI makes people less intelligent or causes permanent cognitive atrophy.
They do suggest that, under certain conditions, relying on AI can reduce independent learning, knowledge retention, or critical-thinking effort.
And several findings point toward an encouraging possibility: how we use AI may be just as important as how much we use it.
That’s the central argument of Is AI Making You Stoopid?
The danger isn’t using AI. The danger is cognitive outsourcing without cognitive exercise.
Questions About AI and Cognitive Fitness
Does using AI make you less intelligent?
There isn’t sufficient evidence to conclude that using artificial intelligence makes people less intelligent. However, emerging research suggests that some forms of AI assistance can reduce the mental effort or learning involved in particular tasks.
The more useful question may be whether we’re continuing to exercise the cognitive abilities we want to maintain.
What is cognitive dependence?
Cognitive dependence is a pattern of relying on external tools, including artificial intelligence, to perform mental activities that we might otherwise perform ourselves.
Using a tool isn’t automatically harmful. The concern arises when we routinely outsource thinking without continuing to practice the underlying skills.
What is cognitive fitness?
Cognitive fitness refers to maintaining and developing the mental abilities we use to understand, learn, imagine, evaluate, solve problems, and adapt.
At The Barber Shop, cognitive fitness includes exercising abilities such as imagination, intuition, insight, perception, critical thinking, curiosity, and ingenuity.
The goal is not merely to accumulate knowledge. It’s to remain an active, capable thinker in a world where AI can increasingly perform intellectual tasks for us.
What is cognitive outsourcing?
Cognitive outsourcing occurs when we delegate a mental task to an external resource, such as a calculator, search engine, smartphone, or AI system.
Outsourcing can save time and improve performance. The potential problem is that repeatedly delegating a particular kind of thinking may reduce our opportunities to practice it.
The Barber Shop advocates balancing cognitive outsourcing with cognitive exercise, not eliminating outsourcing altogether.
How can I use AI without becoming cognitively dependent on it?
Start by doing some of your own thinking before asking AI for assistance. Draft your ideas before prompting, attempt challenging problems before requesting solutions, question AI-generated answers, and continue learning important concepts rather than relying entirely on external information.
These practices are part of the seven recommendations in Is AI Making You Stoopid?
The principle is simple: Use your own intelligence first, then partner with artificial intelligence to produce something even better.
Should I avoid using AI for simple tasks?
Not necessarily. AI can be useful even for simple activities, especially when time, accessibility, or other circumstances make assistance valuable.
But when a task takes only a minute or two and exercises a skill you want to maintain, consider doing it yourself occasionally.
Think of it as taking the stairs instead of the elevator. The elevator isn’t bad. Sometimes you just need the exercise.
Can artificial intelligence actually improve my thinking?
Yes, AI can be used as a tool for cognitive exercise rather than merely a substitute for thinking.
For example, AI can present challenging problems, offer alternative viewpoints, question your assumptions, and evaluate solutions you’ve developed independently.
That’s the idea behind The Thinking Gym at The Barber Shop. AI supplies the challenges, but you do the thinking.
About the Author
Jim Barber has spent more than forty years helping people adapt to changing technology.
Today, his focus is on the other side of that relationship: helping people strengthen their own thinking as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable.
Through The Barber Shop, Jim explores cognitive fitness, cognitive dependence, and the human abilities that can help us thrive in the age of AI.
The Barber Shop offers Cognitive Playbooks, The Thinking Gym, and opportunities to explore ideas with other curious thinkers.
Despite the name, you won’t find much about hair.
But you will find plenty about keeping your mind sharp.
Come to The Barber Shop and pull up a chair. The conversation is just getting started.
© Jim Barber • 2026 | TheBarberShop.com