Is A.I. Making Us Stupider?
Photos from Shutterstock and Markus Spiske on RawPixel.
Artificial intelligence has proven to be useful for automating tasks, improving decision-making, reducing errors, and providing insights from data. This has made it particularly valuable in such areas as healthcare, environmental regulation, and scientific research.
In fact, the advancement of A.I. has led to it being used to complete damn near any task imaginable. One video advertisement for Meta A.I. shows people asking the titular A.I. assistant how to design a training program in preparation for running a marathon, what stars can be seen with a telescope from Cedar Lake, what Little Italy looked like in 1954, and so on.
However, peer-reviewed research is beginning to show that the labor-saving resulting from automation of processes using A.I. is having a detrimental impact on human creativity and intelligence.
The intelligence researcher James Robert Flynn observed and documented increases in I.Q. test scores over successive generations throughout the world since at least 1930, and noticed that they were primarily the result of environmental factors such as increased schooling, greater educational attainment of parents, better nutrition, and less childhood disease, as opposed to genetics.
However, in a 2009 study, Flynn observed that the average IQ of a 14-year-old dropped by more than two points between 1980 and 2008. In addition, the most recent data from the Programme for International Student Assessment for the United States shows that the 15-year-old students tested in 2022 performed less well at math compared to those tested in 2018, whereas results for reading and science plateaued during that same timeframe.
Granted, intelligence is shaped by factors such as education, quality of prenatal care, pollution, disease pandemics, technology, and the presence in nature of micronutrients affecting brain development, such as iodine. Nonetheless, Flynn expressed a suspicion that “the cognitive demands of teen-age subculture have been stagnant over perhaps the last 30 years.”
Although Elizabeth Dworak, a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago is reluctant to put all the blame on A.I., there are valid concerns about the ramifications of society becoming overly reliant upon it. The more we outsource our cognitive effort to machines, the less opportunities we give our brains to assimilate information and instructions associated with things like diligent research, hands-on experimentation, writing letters, reading long articles, or learning a second language.
In fact, the number of students at U.S. colleges and universities enrolling in foreign language courses declined by 16.6 percent between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2021. Without a doubt, the reliance on computerized translation is certainly a factor. Though, while using a computer program to translate phrases between languages can make for easier navigation in a foreign country, repeated dependence on the translation app will cause the user to miss out on understanding things like verb conjugation, noun genders, and different region-specific dialects, thereby inhibiting any real total comprehension of the language in question.
Another gem from Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence is also proving deleterious to society’s acumen, at the intellectual level, through it being used to automate the process of creating art. I hesitate to use that word to characterize still or animated images created with A.I., as in my opinion, art without some kind of palpable, discernible human element and personal touch, simply isn’t. Anybody can understand such a notion when they see that most A.I.-generated pictures are so utterly and irredeemably bland, homogenous, and as a result, totally unconvincing – inferior to even Thomas Kinkade in those regards.
Unfortunately, between the ease with which a person can use A.I. to produce a picture of anything with just the push of a button, and the fact that Coca-Cola, Nike, and Amazon have used A.I.-generated imaging in their advertising – ostensibly because it’s cheaper than hiring real illustrators and photographers – there may be less of an interest among future generations in picking up a pen, pencil, paintbrush, or piece of chalk and learning how to draw.
Most worrisome of all, artificial intelligence can be used to spread false information. News rating website NewsGuard.com identified 1,254 A.I. generated fake news websites as of February 2025 and reported a tenfold increase in 2023 alone. During the 2024 election season, Presidential advisor Elon Musk shared a racist video via X.com in which an A.I.-generated replica of Kamala Harris characterizes herself as “the ultimate diversity hire.” Another video widely circulated around this time, ultimately outed by Reuters as an A.I.-generated fake, shows Harris rambling incoherently during a speech. Meanwhile, Donald Trump used A.I.-generated pictures to announce that Taylor Swift and her fanbase were endorsing him for President of the United States – yet another blatant falsehood.
Just as forsaking regular exercise will cause muscles to atrophy and deteriorate, if humans let machines handle their learning, critical thinking and creative pursuits for them, this will cause our brains to become stagnant. And the less overall intelligence mankind attains through learning and critical thinking, the more vulnerable to authoritarianism and totalitarianism society will become, especially if A.I.-generated propaganda is allowed to proliferate.
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