2026 – Study shows drastic drop among students who allow AI to perform critical thinking tasks
>A team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and the education company McGraw Hill examined a decade of data from a popular online learning tool by McGraw Hill, starting in 2015. Across millions of math sessions by a group that ranged from fifth graders to college students, the researchers compared performance from before 2022, when ChatGPT first came out, with the work that followed its arrival.
>A.I. tools condition people to expect immediate responses and deny them the experience of working through challenges, the authors say, which is crucial for skill development and one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/09/29/magazine/ai-chatbots-brain-development-study.html]