Science & technology | Artificial stupidity
科学与技术 ｜ 人工智障
Illustration: enigmatriz
Jul 16th 2025 | 7 min read
AS ANYBODY WHO has ever taken a standardised test will know, racing to answer an expansive essay question in 20 minutes or less takes serious brain power. Having unfettered access to artificial intelligence (AI) would certainly lighten the mental load. But as a recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests, that help may come at a cost.
参加过标准化考试的人都知道，在20分钟内争分夺秒地写一篇面面俱到的论文需要一颗强大的大脑。如果能无限制地使用人工智能（AI），肯定能省不少力。但麻省理工学院（MIT）的一项最新研究表明，AI的辅助是有代价的。
Over the course of a series of essay-writing sessions, students working with (as well as without) ChatGPT were hooked up to electroencephalograms (EEGs) to measure their brain activity as they toiled. Across the board, the AI users exhibited markedly lower neural activity in parts of the brain associated with creative functions and attention. Students who wrote with the chatbot's help also found it much harder to provide an accurate quote from the paper that they had just produced.
研究人员招募学生写论文进行实验，学生在努力写作时，一部分使用ChatGPT，一部分不使用ChatGPT。研究人员则用脑电图（EEG）监测记录他们的脑部活动。结果显示，使用AI的学生的大脑中与创造力和注意力相关的脑区活跃度明显降低。不仅如此，要求学生准确引用他们刚刚写完的论文内容时，用聊天机器人辅助写作的学生更难回忆起来。
The findings are part of a growing body of work on the potentially detrimental effects of AI use for creativity and learning. This research points to important questions about whether the impressive short-term gains afforded by generative AI may incur a hidden long-term debt.
在关于使用AI对创造力和学习有潜在危害的研究中，这些研究成果还只是一部分。这类研究提出了一个重要问题：生成式AI带来的显著短期收益，是否隐藏着长期的潜在代价。
The MIT study augments the findings of two other high-profile studies on the relationship between AI use and critical thinking. The first, by researchers at Microsoft Research, surveyed 319 knowledge workers who used generative AI at least once a week. The respondents described undertaking more than 900 tasks, from summarising lengthy documents to designing a marketing campaign, with the help of AI. According to participants’ self-assessments, only 555 of these tasks required critical thinking, such as having to review an AI output closely before passing it to a client, or revising a prompt after the AI generated an inadequate result on the first go. The rest of the tasks were deemed essentially mindless. Overall, a majority of workers reported needing either less or much less cognitive effort to complete tasks with generative-AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Microsoft’s own Copilot AI assistant, compared with doing those tasks without AI.
另外两项备受关注的研究发现也在MIT的研究中得到证实。这两项研究探讨的是使用AI对批判性思维的影响。第一项研究由微软研究院进行，调查了319名知识工作者，他们每周至少使用一次生成式AI。被试表示，他们在AI的帮助下做完了900多项任务，从总结冗长文档到设计营销活动，不一而足。根据被试的自评估，这些任务中只有555项需要批判性思维，比如在将AI输出交给客户之前需要仔细审核内容，或者在AI首次生成结果不理想后修改提示词。其余任务基本上不怎么需要动脑。总体而言，大多数被试表示，与不使用AI相比，使用AI助手（比如ChatGPT、谷歌Gemini或微软自家的Copilot等）生成式AI完成任务时，需要的脑力明显减少，甚至大幅减少。
Another study, by Michael Gerlich, a professor at SBS Swiss Business School, asked 666 individuals in Britain how often they used AI and how much they trusted it, before posing them questions based on a widely used critical-thinking assessment. Participants who made more use of AI scored lower across the board. Dr Gerlich says that after the study was published he was contacted by hundreds of high-school and university teachers dealing with growing AI adoption among their students who, he says, "felt that it addresses exactly what they currently experience".
第二项研究是SBS瑞士商学院的Michael Gerlich教授的研究。他先是采访了666名英国被试，问他们平时使用AI的频率和对AI的信任程度，然后问他们一些广泛常见的批判性思维问题。结果显示，使用AI越多的被试得分越低。Gerlich博士表示，这项研究发表后，数百名中学和大学教师联系了他，他们说，自己的学生越来越多地使用AI，而“这项研究结果恰恰印证了他们的现实经历。”
Whether AI will leave people’s brains flabby and weak in the long term remains an open question. Researchers for all three studies have stressed that further work is needed to establish a definitive causal link between elevated AI use and weakened brains. In Dr Gerlich’s study, for example, it is possible that people with greater critical-thinking prowess are just less likely to lean on AI. The MIT study, meanwhile, had a tiny sample size (54 participants in all) and focused on a single narrow task.
长期使用AI真的会让大脑越来越迟钝疲软吗？目前这还是一个悬而未决的问题。三项研究的研究人员都强调，要想确定AI使用增加与脑力减弱之间的明确因果关系，还需要进一步的研究。以Gerlich博士的研究为例，使用AI较少的人可能本身就具备更强的批判性思维能力。而MIT的研究样本量很小（总共只有54名被试），而且实验只关注一项非常具体的任务（写论文）。
Moreover, generative-AI tools explicitly seek to lighten people’s mental loads, as many other technologies do. As long ago as the 5th century BC, Socrates was quoted as grumbling that writing is not “a potion for remembering, but for reminding”. Calculators spare cashiers from computing a bill. Navigation apps remove the need for map-reading. And yet few would argue that people are less capable as a result.
再者，生成式AI工具的目标就是减轻大家的脑力负担，这一点毋庸置疑，和别的技术没什么区别。早在公元前5世纪，苏格拉底就抱怨说，写作不是“用来保存记忆的药水，而是用来激发思考的良药”。计算器让收银员省去了亲自算账的麻烦。导航应用则免去了看地图的需要。然而，几乎没有人会因此认为人类算账、看地图的能力因此变弱了。
There is little evidence to suggest that allowing machines to do users’ mental bidding alters the brain’s inherent capacity for thinking, says Evan Risko, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo who, along with a colleague, Sam Gilbert, coined the term “cognitive offloading” to describe how people shrug off difficult or tedious mental tasks to external aids.
滑铁卢大学心理学教授Evan Risko则表示，还没有确凿证据能够证明，使用人工智能完成脑力劳动会改变大脑固有的思维能力。他与Sam Gilbert共同创造了“脑力转嫁”的概念，说的就是人把困难或枯燥的脑力工作转嫁给外部工具去做。
The worry is that, as Dr Risko puts it, generative AI allows one to “offload a much more complex set of processes”. Offloading some mental arithmetic, which has only a narrow set of applications, is not the same as offloading a thought process like writing or problem-solving. And once the brain has developed a taste for offloading, it can be a hard habit to kick. The tendency to seek the least effortful way to solve a problem, known as “cognitive miserliness”, could create what Dr Gerlich describes as a feedback loop. As AI-reliant individuals find it harder to think critically, their brains may become more miserly, which will lead to further offloading. One participant in Dr Gerlich’s study, a heavy user of generative AI, lamented “I rely so much on AI that I don’t think I’d know how to solve certain problems without it.”
Risko博士说，令人担忧的是，生成式AI让人能够“将相当复杂的脑力劳动转嫁出去”。把（应用场景十分有限的）心算任务转嫁给工具，和把涉及思考过程的写作或解决问题的任务转嫁给工具，完全是两码事。一旦大脑尝到了转嫁脑力劳动的甜头，这个习惯就很难改掉。人总是会找最省力的的方法解决问题，心理学上称之为“认知吝啬”（最省力原则），这可能会产生Gerlich博士所发现的“越用AI，批判思维越差”的恶性循环：依赖AI的人，批判性思维会变差，大脑的认知能力会更“吝啬”（更不愿意动脑子），结果把更多的脑力劳动转嫁出去。Gerlich博士研究中，一位重度AI用户感叹：“我太依赖AI了，不用它的话，有些问题我根本不知道如何解决。”
Many companies are looking forward to the possible productivity gains from greater adoption of ai. But there could be a sting in the tail. “Long-term critical-thinking decay would likely result in reduced competitiveness,” says Barbara Larson, a professor of management at Northeastern University. Prolonged AI use could also make employees less creative. In a study at the University of Toronto, 460 participants were instructed to propose imaginative uses for a series of everyday objects, such as a car tyre or a pair of trousers. Those who had been exposed to ideas generated by AI tended to produce answers deemed less creative and diverse than a control group who worked unaided.
许多企业都期待着更广泛采用AI能带来生产力提升。但可能会有意想不到的副作用。东北大学管理学教授Barbara Larson表示：“长期的批判性思维能力衰退可能会导致竞争力下降。”长期使用AI也可能导致员工的创造力降低。多伦多大学做了一项研究，要求460名被试为一些日常物品（如汽车轮胎或裤子）提出富有想象力的用途。与参照组相比，那些用过AI生成创意的被试给的答案，创意性和多样性都更低。
When it came to the trousers, for instance, the chatbot proposed stuffing a pair with hay to make half of a scarecrow—in effect suggesting trousers be reused as trousers. An unaided participant, by contrast, proposed sticking nuts in the pockets to make a novelty bird feeder.
拿裤子来说，聊天机器人说可以把裤子塞满干草来做稻草人的下半身——其实还是把裤子当裤子用。而没有借助AI的被试则提出在裤子口袋里装坚果，做成新型的喂鸟器。
There are ways to keep the brain fit. Dr Larson suggests that the smartest way to get ahead with AI is to limit its role to that of “an enthusiastic but somewhat naive assistant”. Dr Gerlich recommends that, rather than asking a chatbot to generate the final desired output, one should prompt it at each step on the path to the solution. Instead of asking it “Where should I go for a sunny holiday?”, for instance, one could start by asking where it rains the least, and proceed from there.
要保持大脑强健，也是有办法的。Larson博士建议，要更好地使用AI，最巧妙的方法就是只把它当作“积极主动但单纯清澈的助手”。Gerlich博士则建议，与其让聊天机器人直接给出想要的最终结果，不如在解决问题的每一步都向它提问。例如，与其直接问它“我该去哪里度假，才能享受阳光灿烂的假期？”，不如先问问它哪些地方降雨最少，然后再一步步深入。
Members of the Microsoft team have also been testing AI assistants that interrupt users with “provocations” to prompt deeper thought. In a similar vein, a team from Emory and Stanford Universities have proposed rewiring chatbots to serve as “thinking assistants” that ask users probing questions, rather than simply providing answers. One imagines that Socrates might heartily approve.
微软团队也在测试一种新的AI助手，让它时不时地“挑战”用户，引导用户更深入地思考。此外，埃默里大学和斯坦福大学的研究团队也提出重新设计聊天机器人的构想，希望将它们打造成“思考助手”，向用户提出引人深思的问题，而不只是简单地提供答案。可以想见，苏格拉底对此肯定会由衷赞同。
Such strategies might not be all that useful in practice, however, even in the unlikely event that model-builders tweaked their interfaces to make chatbots clunkier, or slower. They could even come at a cost. A study by Abilene Christian University in Texas found that AI assistants which repeatedly jumped in with provocations degraded the performance of weaker coders on a simple programming task.
然而在实际应用中，这些策略可能用处不大，毕竟大模型开发者不太可能主动把聊天机器人变得智商更低或反应更慢。这些方法甚至可能适得其反。德克萨斯州阿比林基督教大学的研究表明，那些频繁打断并“挑战”用户的AI助手，实际上会让编程基础薄弱的程序员在简单任务中表现变差。
Other potential measures to keep people’s brains active are more straightforward, if also rather more bossy. Overeager users of generative AI could be required to come up with their own answer to a query, or simply wait a few minutes, before they’re allowed to access the AI. Such “cognitive forcing” may lead users to perform better, according to Zana Buçinca, a researcher at Microsoft who studies these techniques, but will be less popular. “People do not like to be pushed to engage,” she says. Demand for workarounds would therefore probably be high. In a demographically representative survey conducted in 16 countries by Oliver Wyman, a consultancy, 47% of respondents said they would use generative-AI tools even if their employer forbade it.
保持大脑活跃还有一些更直接的方法，虽然也更霸总一些。对于过度依赖生成式AI的用户，可以要求他们先自己解答问题，或者先等待几分钟，才能使用AI。研究这些技巧的微软研究员Zana Buçinca表示，这种“强制脑力劳动”可以提高用户的表现，就是不太受欢迎。她说：“大家不喜欢强迫动脑子。”因此，肯定会有很多人去找规避这些限制的办法。咨询公司Oliver Wyman在16个国家广泛进行调查，结果相当具有代表性，调查显示，就算雇主明令禁止，47%的受访者也会使用生成式AI工具。
The technology is so young that, for many tasks, the human brain is still the sharpest tool in the toolkit. But in time both the consumers of ai and its regulators will have to assess whether its wider benefits outweigh any cognitive costs. If stronger evidence emerges that ai makes people less intelligent, will they care? ■
AI依然是一项年轻的技术，对于许多任务而言，人类大脑仍是工具箱中最高效的工具。但随着时间推移，AI的用户和监管者都需要思考，它带来的好处，相比它对大脑认知能力可能造成的伤害，值不值得。就算未来有更确凿的证据，表明AI确实会降低人类认知能力，那时的我们会介意吗？■
精读精讲——单词短语
unfettered
adj. not limited by rules or any other controlling influence
Poets are unfettered by the normal rules of sentence structure.
诗人不受常规句法规则限制。
come at a cost
付出代价，伴随着代价，是有代价的
Career success often comes at a cost to personal time and relationships.
事业成功常以个人时间和人际关系为代价。
Fast food is yummy. However, it comes at a cost to our health when you eat too much.
快餐很好吃，但吃太多会对我们的健康有害。
electroencephalogram
n. a drawing or image made by an electroencephalograph
脑电图，简称EEG
The electroencephalogram was very poor, and a cerebral computerized tomographic scan revealed an occipital hematoma.
脑电图结果极差，脑部CT扫描发现枕叶血肿。
detrimental
adj. causing harm or damage 有危害的，有损害的
（同义词：damaging, harmful, injurious)
These chemicals have a detrimental impact on the environment.
这些化学品对环境有害。
afforded by
to give or provide someone with a particular opportunity 提供或给予（机会等）
"afforded by"是由动词"afford"的被动形式构成，意为"由...提供"或"由...带来"，通常用来表示某物或某种情况使得某事成为可能。
例句：
The advantages afforded by modern technology have transformed our daily lives.
现代技术带来的优势改变了我们的日常生活。
He enjoyed the freedom afforded by working from home.
他享受在家工作所带来的自由。
augment
v. to increase the size or value of something by adding something to it 提高；增大；加强
He would have to find work to augment his income.
他可能得找活儿干来增加收入。
flabby
adj. soft and fat
flabby arms/thighs 肥胖的手臂/大腿
adj. weak and without force 软弱无力的
a flabby argument 苍白无力的论据
causal
adj. a relationship, link, etc. between two things in which one causes the other 因果关系（联系等）
Is there a causal relationship between violence on television and violent behavior?
电视暴力和暴力行为之间有因果关系吗？
inherent
adj. existing as a natural or basic part of something 内在的；固有的，生来就有的
There are dangers/risks inherent in almost every sport.
几乎每种运动本身都有危险/风险。
I have an inherent distrust of lawyers.
我生来就对律师有种不信任感。
cognitive offloading
认知卸载是指人类将原本需要靠自己记忆、推理或判断的认知任务转交给外部工具或媒介来完成，比如使用纸笔记事、使用手机提醒事项、或者依赖搜索引擎和计算器。。
认知卸载可以提高效率，让我们将认知资源集中在更复杂的任务上。但是，用进废退，过度依赖认知卸载可能会导致某些认知技能的退化。
tedious
adj. boring 单调乏味的，无趣的
a tedious job 单调乏味的工作
mental arithmetic
n. calculations that you do in your mind, without writing down any numbers 心算
cognitive miserliness
认知吝啬源于认知心理学，指人类大脑倾向于选择需要最少认知努力的思考方式，即"省力思考"的倾向。认知吝啬是人类认知过程中的一个普遍现象，它既有节省认知资源的好处，也可能带来认知偏差的风险。
在文章中，认知吝啬与AI使用相关联，意味着人们可能会越来越依赖AI来处理需要思考的任务，因为这样做省时省力。这种倾向可能导致人们的思考能力随着时间推移而减弱。
例句：
Cognitive miserliness explains why many people rely on quick judgments rather than careful analysis when making decisions.
认知吝啬解释了为什么许多人在做决定时依赖快速判断，而非仔细分析。
miserly
adj. like or typical of a miser 守财奴似的；吝啬的，小气的
a miserly person 吝啬的人
adj. (amount) extremely small
The workers are paid a miserly $2 a day.
工人们每天才挣少得可怜的两美元。
prolonged
adj. continuing for a long time 延续很久的，长期的
Prolonged use of the drug is known to have harmful side-effects.
据了解，长期服用此药会产生对人体有害的副作用。
novelty
n. something that has not been experienced before and so is interesting 新奇的事物
Tourists are still a novelty on this remote island.
罕有游客造访这座偏僻的岛屿。
n. the quality of being new and unusual. 新颖，新奇
In Britain in the 1950s, television still had novelty value.
在20世纪50年代的英国，电视机是新奇物件。
prompt
v. to make something happen 引起；导致；激起
His words prompted me to start thinking about this issue.
他的话让我开始思考这个问题。
v. to help someone, especially an actor, to remember what they were going to say or do （尤指）给（演员）提词
I forgot my line and had to be prompted.
我忘词了，只好让人提词。
adj. (of an action) done quickly and without delay, or (of a person) acting quickly or arriving at the arranged time 迅速的；敏捷的；及时的
They are usually fairly prompt in dealing with enquiries.
他们回复咨询通常都比较快。
adv. at the time stated and no later. 准时，正点
We will be leaving at six o’clock prompt.
我们六点准时动身。
The meeting will begin at ten o’clock prompt.
会议将在十点准时召开。
in a similar vein
in the same style of speaking or writing 从相似的角度，以类似的方式，同理
In a similar vein, it is also a problem for teacher-educators and trainers.
这同样是教师和培训师面临的问题。
rewire
v. to put a new system of electric wires into a building or machine 给……重装电线
这个词可以引申为“重新调整”、“重塑”。
rewire the brain 重塑大脑
You really should have the whole house rewired.
你真的应该把整栋房子的电线线路更换重布。
clunky
adj. heavy and solid in an ugly way 笨重的
The clunky handsets looked old-fashioned as soon as they were launched.
这些笨重的手机刚投放市场就显得过时了。
adj. old-fashioned or slow 老式的，缓慢的
It was the slow, clunky technology it used that was responsible for the firm’s failure.
正是公司采用的缓慢老式的技术导致其破产。
provocation
n. an action or statement that is intended to make someone angry 激怒；挑衅；挑衅的话
He’d fly into a rage at the slightest provocation.
哪怕是稍稍惹他一下他都会勃然大怒。
bossy
adj. always telling people what to do 爱指挥人的；专横的
She is strong without being bossy.
她很有魄力，但并不专横。
workaround
n. a way of dealing with a problem or making something work despite the problem, without completely solving it 变通方法，替代办法
The software still has a few glitches but we’ve come up with a workaround.
这个软件还是有一些小故障，但是我们已经相处了一个变通方法。
精读精讲——单词短语
threshold
n. the level of point at which you start to experience something, or at which something starts to happen 阈值，界限；七点
e.g. I have a low boredom threshold (=i do feel bored easily.)
我很容易感到厌倦。
aerobically
adv. in an aerobic manner: "with oxygen" or relating to processes that require the presence of free oxygen to occur. 有氧地，需氧地
（形容词形式为aerobic）
e.g. When you work out aerobically, your body burns calories (and fat) in three specific ways.
taper
v. (shape or form) to become progressively smaller or narrower at one end.
e.g. The spire of the building tapers to a point.
v. (athletics and training) to gradually reduce the volume or intensity of a workout routine before a major competition (like a marathon) to allow the body to rest.
e.g. Runners typically taper their mileage in the final two weeks before the race day.
v. (finance and economics) a gradual reduction in the amount of stimulus or central bank actions (like quantitative easing) provided to the economy,
e.g. The Federal Reserve’s decision to taper its bond-buying program caused ripples in the stock market.
v. (healthcare) the act of slowly and gradually reducing a medication or dosage rather than stopping abruptly (”cold turkey”) to safely wean the body off it.
e.g. It is important to taper antidepressants to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
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