Kosmyna, et al. (2025)'s research on Cognitive Debt when Using an AI and Warning Signs of Cognitive Debt 16/11/25

The term cognitive debt has emerged from recent human–AI interaction research — particularly from studies at MIT — to describe the subtle but accumulating mental costs that arise when humans repeatedly offload thinking tasks to AI systems. Just as financial debt represents borrowed resources that must eventually be repaid (with interest), cognitive debt represents thinking, memory, and reasoning that we defer to technology today, at the cost of weakened abilities tomorrow.

While the term is new, the phenomenon builds on decades of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and digital-memory research. As AI becomes increasingly capable of writing, reasoning, planning, and remembering for us, researchers warn that cognitive debt may be one of the most significant — and least visible — mental effects of prolonged AI use. This is what I am writing below about.

1. What is Cognitive Debt?

Cognitive debt refers to the mental “deficit” created when individuals habitually rely on AI to perform tasks that normally strengthen cognitive functions such as:

  • memory retrieval

  • focused attention

  • planning and sequencing

  • inferential reasoning

  • evaluation and judgment

  • complex problem-solving

Like unused muscles, these cognitive systems can weaken over time when they are not activated. AI shortcuts amplify this risk because they replace the effort that ordinarily drives deep learning and neural strengthening.

Cognitive debt is not immediately noticeable. Like financial debt, it accumulates quietly, becomes harder to reverse the longer it persists, and may only become visible when a person must think without AI support.

2. Cognitive Debt vs. Cognitive Offloading

These two concepts are related but distinct:

Cognitive Offloading

Storing information or delegating tasks to external tools — e.g., calendars, calculators, Google, or AI. Offloading is not inherently harmful.

Cognitive Debt

Occurs when offloading becomes so habitual and extensive that it reduces a person’s capacity to perform those cognitive tasks independently.

AI differs from older tools because it can replace multi-step thinking, not just simple memory. This creates deeper and faster forms of cognitive debt.

3. How AI Creates Cognitive Debt: Four Mechanisms

(A) Reduced Neural Engagement

MIT’s EEG-based research showed that when individuals wrote using AI-generated content, brain regions related to memory, attention, and executive control showed significantly lower activity.
Over time, this low engagement becomes the “default mode” of thinking, weakening the neural circuits that normally support independent reasoning.

This is the neurological core of cognitive debt.

(B) Short-Circuiting the Learning Cycle

Learning requires four steps:

  1. Struggle or productive difficulty

  2. Error detection

  3. Revision

  4. Consolidation (memory encoding)

AI-based tools often skip directly to the final solution, removing struggle, effort, and mistake-correction.
Without these steps, the brain does not consolidate new knowledge, and cognitive debt increases.

This is why AI-generated solutions feel efficient but produce shallow learning.

(C) Dependency Loops

Each time someone uses AI to think for them, the brain receives a reward:

  • less effort

  • faster results

  • lower cognitive strain

This makes AI use reinforcing and habit-forming.
Over time, people become less willing to engage in effortful thinking, increasing reliance on AI and deepening cognitive debt.

The loop looks like this:

Offload → less effort → brain reward → increased reliance → reduced skill → greater need to offload

(D) Erosion of Internal Memory

The "Google Effect" research already showed that humans remember where information is, not what it is, when digital tools are available.

With AI, this shifts even further:

Instead of remembering:

  • facts

  • steps

  • rules

  • arguments

  • grammar

  • problem-solving methods

People remember:

  • “I can ask/use/rely on the AI again.”

This reduces retrieval practice, which is essential for memory consolidation, and accelerates cognitive debt.

4. Warning Signs of Cognitive Debt

Based on multiple experimental and observational studies, common indicators include:

  • Difficulty writing or thinking without AI

  • Lower tolerance for cognitive effort

  • Decreased ability to generate ideas from scratch

  • Weaker working memory (difficulty holding multiple thoughts)

  • Reduced creativity (ideas follow AI patterns)

  • Overreliance on AI even for trivial decisions

  • Loss of confidence in one’s own ability to reason

These symptoms appear gradually, often unnoticed by the user.

5. Why Cognitive Debt Is a Long-Term Risk

A. It Can Become Self-Reinforcing

The more a person uses AI to think for them, the more they feel they need to rely on AI.
This creates compounding cognitive debt — similar to compounding interest.

B. It Erodes Foundational Skills

The abilities most likely to degrade include:

  • writing fluency

  • conceptual reasoning

  • argumentation

  • analytical reading

  • mental arithmetic

  • long-form planning

  • imagination

These are the very skills students and professionals need to function in high-level environments.

C. Rebuilding Lost Cognitive Skills Takes Time

Neural pathways weakened through disuse require extended retraining.
Cognitive debt recovery may require months or years of deliberate effort — just as physical rehabilitation requires structured practice.

D. It Affects Professional Expertise

If professionals depend on AI for diagnosis, analysis, drafting, or decision support, their “expert intuition” — built over years — may erode.

6. Is Cognitive Debt Inevitable?

Not necessarily.
Cognitive debt arises not from using AI, but from how and when it is used.

Certain usage patterns increase cognitive debt:

  • accepting AI-generated content with no evaluation

  • using AI for first drafts

  • outsourcing writing, idea generation, or summarizing

  • using AI to avoid difficult thinking

Other patterns avoid cognitive debt:

  • using AI as a coach, not a writer

  • asking AI questions that provoke your own reasoning

  • comparing your draft with AI suggestions

  • using AI for critique rather than content creation

AI that supports thinking is beneficial.
AI that replaces thinking produces cognitive debt.

7. Conclusion: The Cost of Convenience

Cognitive debt is the silent cognitive cost of convenience.
Its dangers are not dramatic in the short term — your phone won't make your memory collapse overnight.
But the long-term effects on learning, expertise, and intellectual independence may be profound.

The challenge for educators, policymakers, and individuals is to ensure that AI becomes:

a partner in thinking, not a substitute for thought.

Used well, AI strengthens cognition.
Used carelessly, it creates cognitive debt — a debt that the future self must repay.


  • Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., et al. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (preprint; MIT Media Lab). 2025.  https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872