By Sanya Mansoor

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the latest research to find that relying too much on chatbots can diminish critical-thinking skills, and potentially decrease our ability to discern misinformation for ourselves.

During the four-week study, released in April, researchers tracked 67 participants and quizzed them on whether pairs of news-related headlines and images were real. They found that AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT would be useful for detecting fake news – but when participants relied on them too much, they became worse at spotting misinformation.

Researchers also found that when it came to deciding which news headlines and images were real, AI often prioritized an accurate response, rather than cultivating an ability to think. This dependency could actually worsen judgment in the long term, according to the study.

“When we’re interacting with AI, we feel we’re becoming better at certain tasks and there’s enough research that shows we are not,” says Anku Rani, a PhD student at MIT and co-lead author of the study.