On Sunday afternoon, while interviewing candidates for an internship role, educationist Fatema Agarkar decided to have them write an essay describing their goals. “Before I spoke with them, I wanted them to write about why they wanted to work in education. I had read their long and really articulate emails to me, which I was certain I wouldn’t have been able to compose as an 18-year-old myself. They were taken aback when I said they couldn’t use their phones or the Internet. And that they only had 10 minutes for this task,” she elaborates. When pressed to deliver, the candidates all claimed that writing by hand was overrated, especially when there was technology freely available to save them the effort and the time investment, Agarkar notes: “They claimed that AI could help them move right past the thinking and strategising phases into monetisation, little realising that the first two functions required original, nuanced thought.”

Parents can restrict screen time, and make unstructured offline play a part of daily routines for children. Representation pics/Istock

Agarkar’s observations are echoed by a recent MIT study, which measured the neural and behavioural consequences of LLM (Large Language Model)-assisted essay writing. When the participants’ brain connectivity was measured, brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks. Those using search engines showed moderate engagement, while LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels. Findings such as these raise the pertinent question — Is our use of Artificial Intelligence undermining the grey matter we’re born with?