AI Reports · MIT · 2026-10-15 · Blog / commentary
Q&A: The “collision” between AI, your brain, and society
MIT Professor Eric So argues in his new book, The Collision: What AI Does to Us, that heavy AI use can cause cognitive atrophy, in which people fail to develop and retain essential thinking skills. He notes that AI can speed up work and serve as useful domain-specific tools, but warns of the costs of relying on it too broadly. His conclusions draw on research from academia and industry, including an Anthropic study finding that about half of college students' queries were low-effort requests for simple answers.