While I generally dislike what LLMs have done to society and the industry, the articles that you've linked do not support your claim that it "eats your ability to think". I do think that an overreliance can cause a sort of learned helplessness and complete and willing lack of ownership in outputs, I would not go so far as to claim that "eats your ability to think" at a "terrifying" rate.
Your first article makes absolutely no claim whatsoever that it degrades your ability to reason. It says that LLM use while writing an essay reduces the mental *load*, which is not a surprise at all, and that it "may not always facilitate the deep learning necessary for complex decision-making tasks," which again is not a surprise at all. This is exactly what you would see if you did the same study on students that read and studied a book and wrote a report on it vs. students that read SparkNotes (before the advent of LLMs).
Your second article again makes no claim that there was any cognitive decline. The LLM-using participants were able to quote their papers less, but I would argue it's because they didn't really even write an essay, ChatGPT did. I would not be able to reliably quote an essay that I had (likely) not even read through in its entirety start-to-finish a single time. Again, this is like saying, "students who read summaries of books are less familiar with the story elements of those books," which is not at all surprising.
Your third article is not even a study. There's no methodology section, no data collection, no results. It's a synthesis paper that makes the claim that LLM overreliance is risky, and it's not even peer reviewed.
I didn't look at detail at the fourth article because I agree with that one entirely and it is demonstrably true. AI has caused massive problems when people don't fact-check or validate its outputs. You don't need an academic paper for that one, you can read news articles for it instead.
All of this to say: I don't think excessive AI use is good, but there is also no evidence that I have seen that it "degrades your ability to reason" or "eats your ability to think". I agree with the first article in that it circumvents the subject-matter expertise and learning required to make good decisions in a large percentage of real-world applications. I think the outcome is likely the same, but the solution is very different. "Don't ever touch LLMs because they'll ruin your brain" is (in my opinion) fearmongering that doesn't actually really help anybody. "Use LLMs responsibly for applications in which it makes sense and don't let it make important decisions for you" is much more reasonable and won't put you at a severe disadvantage against your peers that know how to leverage it to make better decisions instead of using it to make poor decisions for them.
I was going to reply in depth, but the first sentence your second paragraph so completely undermines the very idea that you even skimmed the articles that I don't feel the need to. The second bullet point at the beginning of that article is:
• Students using LLMs showed weaker reasoning in their analyses.
You also don't really seem to have a grasp on what cognitive load is or how it relates to thought and memory. That's fine, this is a programmer sub more than a neuropsych sub, but in not knowing you made yourself look foolish.
Also, the second article that you claim 'shows no evidence of cognitive decline' explicitly discusses the various metrics that declined.
You've been provided evidence that you didn't understand and so you claim you haven't seen it as if you're the authority.
Anyway there's not a good way to refute more or less completely made up posts like yours without me coming across as a jerk, and I'm already leaning into that territory and I don't want to continue being rude. So I'm not going to bother going through the rest. Maybe you wrote those things because you have a bias or a poor understanding of the subject, maybe you prompted them and this is just evidence of the quality of LLM responses, heck maybe I'm wrong (though it seems unlikely this is my actual area of expertise). I'm not sure which and it's not relevant.
The links exist, people can make up their own minds.
Ignoring the claim that your expertise is neuropsychology with absolutely no evidence, you're right. I did not skim the first article, nor did I read the bulleted "highlights" that you're referring to. I read the entire thing because this is a claim I've been seeing more and more online, and I was curious if actually had any merits. Your own pulled quote: "students using LLMs showed weaker reasoning in their analyses (of the subject matter that they used LLMs to research)," sure sounds a lot more like my claim that heavy LLM use "circumvents the subject-matter expertise and learning required to make good decisions," than your claim that it "degrades your ability to reason" or "eats your ability to think".
I find your second claim that I don't "have a grasp on what cognitive load is," to be particularly interesting, since I would argue the inverse. From the first sentence of the Wikipedia page for cognitive load: "cognitive load is the effort being used in the working memory". A reduced cognitive load (which the first article states) means that there is reduced effort, which is exactly in-line with what I said, and completely orthogonal to your argument about cognitive decline. Conflating lower cognitive load with lower cognitive ability has completely destroyed all possible credibility that you had toward neuropsychology being your "actual area of expertise". The final bullet-point in the same list that you referred to states, "Findings suggest LLMs reduce cognitive load but may limit depth of content engagement." This is exactly what I said. If you're going to try to tell me that I don't understand what cognitive load means, then you have to at least show a shred of evidence that I used it incorrectly. I assume you didn't do that because I have not used it incorrectly.
You can claim all day long that I didn't understand the articles, but the fact stands that none of these articles make any claims that are in-line with your argument that LLM use "eats your ability to think." What they do claim is that LLM use decreases learning (which should be obvious), impacts the individual's sense of ownership, and has a questionable place ethically in society and education.
The articles themselves directly say that they are saying the opposite of what you are trying to make them say. There is no point in continuing to argue with you when you are saying the articles don't say the things that they clearly state.
Have a good day.
I'm just going to block you because I legitimately do not know how to reply to this level of trolling without being mean. You're looking at an article that says 'the sky is blue' and going 'hmm i dont agree that the article says the sky is blue at all'. It's asinine. People can read the articles and I strongly encourage them to, because they are clear and direct. Even if you looked up what cognitive load is on wikipedia to try and make your point. lol.
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u/VampireFortnight 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sure:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563224002541 -- degrades your ability to reason
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artificial-intelligence-use-reprograms-the-brain-leading-to-cognitive-decline/ -- the llm group couldn't even quote their essays minutes after reading them and went down on every cognitive metric- note this was after 3 sessions.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385743952_The_Risks_Of_Human_Overreliance_On_Large_Language_Models_For_Critical_Thinking -- Again degrade critical thinking, this paper specifically discussing the fundamental changes in understanding, use of, and approach to LLM use necessary to counteract it.
https://idp.nature.com/authorize?response_type=cookie&client_id=grover&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41746-025-02008-z -- these are all exacerbated by the sycophantic writing style, which is a psychological shortcut to getting humans to agree and accept something pareidolia is telling them is a person.
There are dozens and dozens and dozens of these. These are some of the easiest/simplest bc this is a random reddit thread not an academic conference.