At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.
The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.
Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings, warns, “When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.“
Cognitive off-loading isn’t new. The report points out that keyboards and computers reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators automated basic math. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of off-loading, especially in schools where learning can feel transactional.