A recent MIT study, “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” provides sobering evidence. When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47 percent drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, and critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage. Eighty-three percent of heavy AI users couldn’t recall key points from what they’d “written,” compared to only 10 percent of those who composed unaided. Neutral reviewers described the AI-assisted writing as “soulless, empty, lacking individuality.” Most alarmingly, after four months of reliance on ChatGPT, participants wrote worse once it was removed than those who had never used it at all.