AI's Cognitive Impact: Emerging Market for Brain Wellness & Mindful Tech
Discussions in the provided Reddit thread, "AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid," highlight a growing worry that relying too much on AI for tasks like summarizing and research might be harming our ability to think critically, concentrate, and come up with original ideas. This shift in sentiment opens up markets for:
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Cognitive Shield Solutions: Brain training apps, courses, or services designed to keep your mind sharp and improve skills like critical thinking, memory, and focus in an AI-dominated world. These solutions directly tackle concerns like, "I can't concentrate anymore" and the idea that if you don't use your mental muscles, you'll lose them.
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Strategic AI Literacy & Co-piloting Education: Educational content and training programs that teach users how to use AI effectively for productivity—handling the tedious stuff—while still nurturing and developing human intellect, originality, and understanding of AI's limitations. For example, avoiding AI-generated "hallucinations" in research.
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Mindful Technology & Deep Work Ecosystems: Digital wellness programs, tools, and methods that promote mindful tech use and support deep, focused thinking. These would counteract the "shortcuts" AI often provides and help users regain their ability to sustain attention and fight cognitive fragmentation.
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Platforms & Services Championing Human Originality: Initiatives, platforms, or services that encourage, support, and reward original human-generated analysis, creativity, and problem-solving. This addresses the fear that widespread AI use could lead to cookie-cutter outputs and a decline in fresh, human insights.
Origin Reddit Post
r/futurology
AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid | As more and more people use AI tech one has to ask; are these systems making us dumber?
Posted by u/chrisdh79•05/31/2025
Top Comments
u/Austoman
Every commercial for AI can be summarized as "Hey do you hate it when you have to think about how to do a thing or do you not like feeling when you have to write a thing? AI will do it for yo
u/VincoClavis
Exactly this - I’ve been focusing on creating new solutions at work whereas before I was spending 80% of my time entering data into spreadsheets.
u/Cum_on_doorknob
Reminds me of the old days when the Jon Stewart would run all the clips of the Fox News people all saying the same lines.
u/karmakosmik1352
Missing the point here quite a bit. The question is what's the long term implications.
u/dibship
yes, and the best part is this race to the bottom could mean no new input for the ml makers to steal.
also i bristle at calling it ai, it's just a search engine that can draw context. it doe
u/Suberizu
Good article. Reading it fully was intellectually stimulating.
u/DCLexiLou
These articles are sprouting like weeds. All new tech makes us dumber in some ways and hopefully smarter in others. People who learned to operate a stream powered factory loom eventually forg
u/Josvan135
Right?
I use AI pretty heavily to assist me with editing tasks and quick research for story ideas.
It's literally like having a very good syntax/grammar editor and research assistant on c
u/Purple_Science4477
Why use you for creative solutions if the AI is so much better in everyway though? AI will do it for free while doing your other work too apparently
u/AccomplishedSpell102
US/Western governments are doing the exact same thing.
u/chrisdh79
From the article: How are you using new AI technology? Maybe you're only deploying things like ChatGPT to summarize long texts or draft up mindless emails. But what are you losing by taking t
u/Harha
Yes and they get emotional when someone points it out. :3
u/ready-eddy
For me it feels like my concentration is worse because of AI. There are so many shortcuts now to summarize content
u/DrBoots
Whereas before my inbox was full of emails of dubious quality from co-workers asking and answering questions.
My inbox is now full of Ai slop that my co-workers generate and pinch off assu
u/kolpator
human body has a very powerfull rule: if you dont use it, you will lose it.
u/Overbaron
I feel like AI is making me a lot more capable and productive.
No more drudgery work, I can focus on coming up with novel solutions instead of spending 80% of my time on shovelwork
u/CadianGuardsman
I think a ton of people who grew up playing video games could use a map way better than their parents did, provided the landmarks are accurately placed on the map. There was an entire boomer
u/DCLexiLou
These articles are sprouting like weeds. All new tech makes us dumber in some ways and hopefully smarter in others. People who learned to operate a stream powered factory loom eventually forg
u/Astribulus
Nothing so formal. "Slop" has caught on because it quickly and accurately summarizes the output of common large language models. It homogenizes information into an easily consumed form which,
u/Overbaron
I feel like AI is making me a lot more capable and productive.
No more drudgery work, I can focus on coming up with novel solutions instead of spending 80% of my time on shovelwork
u/mokujin42
We have a dramatically lower tolerance for boredom down the line as a society, people 50 years ago could sit and be content and bored for much longer than we can now, it's not just you if tha
u/kolpator
human body has a very powerfull rule: if you dont use it, you will lose it.
u/DarthWoo
I was going to say look at how few people can navigate a long trip via a paper roadmap today versus just relying on GPS the whole way. (And that doesn't even get into the completely ridiculou
u/mockfu
Neither is it connected to becoming dumber.
u/OverSoft
I’m sure it taints some of my skills, but it makes me at least double as productive. (I’m a programmer by the way)
u/beingsubmitted
No, of course they aren't, because writing a paragraph and forming thoughts are still required to effectively prompt AI. That's something that distinguishes AI from reddit, apparently.
u/Lain_Staley
You're honestly comparing the obsolescence of niche skills like steam-powered looms with... the ability to write a paragraph? Forming thoughts?
u/Cannavor
It's interesting that in China where the government is in charge rather than business interests, the population is still pretty much fully tech-optimist. This is despite the government using
u/Purple_Science4477
How do you ensure the research is not all hallucinated?
u/crawling-alreadygirl
Don't quote me on this, but I've read that this is the reason for rapid eye movement in sleep: if our eyes were completely shut off 1/3 of the time, other processes would start to colonize th
u/mushinnoshit
That's really fucking cool if true
u/fatbunyip
Higher productivity isn't mutually exclusive with becoming dumber.
u/theStaircaseProject
It sounds like the content this person is encountering seems largely dominated by what the average person might, in their same shoes, consider useless.
People leave candy wrappers on the si
u/FuturologyBot
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
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From the article: How are you using new AI technology? Maybe you're only deploying things like ChatGPT to summarize long
u/Wungoos
This is wild to me because the LITTLE bit I have used it it's just been as like a specific google. If I've got a very specific question and googling it isn't helping. I've never once used it
u/Cum_on_doorknob
So, was there a meeting where we all decided AI content would exclusively be described as “slop”?
u/DarthWoo
I was going to say look at how few people can navigate a long trip via a paper roadmap today versus just relying on GPS the whole way. (And that doesn't even get into the completely ridiculou
u/hoppentwinkle
It makes dumb people dumber, smart people smarter. Maybe
u/scrundel
Your research is then synthesized from the thoughts and analysis of others, fed into the model. If everyone does this, then all similar research will produce similar results, and your stories
u/Lain_Staley
You're honestly comparing the obsolescence of niche skills like steam-powered looms with... the ability to write a paragraph? Forming thoughts?
u/ready-eddy
For me it feels like my concentration is worse because of AI. There are so many shortcuts now to summarize content
u/mockfu
Neither is it connected to becoming dumber.
u/Harha
Yes and they get emotional when someone points it out. :3
u/fatbunyip
Higher productivity isn't mutually exclusive with becoming dumber.
u/Stustpisus
That’s technology in general, it’s just that we were raised into the old ones without context. Calculators were said to make kids bad at mental math, and it’s kind of true. Not saying it’s go
u/beepuboopu_aishiteru
I use Chat GPT to write professional dick-sucking emails to the client. I never liked doing it, and now I don't have to do it again. It saves me a ton of time and stress making sure I've got
u/chrisdh79
From the article: How are you using new AI technology? Maybe you're only deploying things like ChatGPT to summarize long texts or draft up mindless emails. But what are you losing by taking t
u/FuturologyBot
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
---
From the article: How are you using new AI technology? Maybe you're only deploying things like ChatGPT to summarize long
u/VincoClavis
Exactly this - I’ve been focusing on creating new solutions at work whereas before I was spending 80% of my time entering data into spreadsheets.
u/karmakosmik1352
Missing the point here quite a bit. The question is what's the long term implications.