how repeated – Vivienne Ming says AI doesn’t cause dementia, but relying on chatbots to do thinking for you can steadily shrink the brain’s “cognitive reserve” over time—an ability linked to lower dementia risk—especially if young people outsource mental effort repeatedly. S
For Vivienne Ming, the alarm doesn’t start with what AI produces—it starts with what people stop doing.
The theoretical neuroscientist, chief scientist at the Possibility Institute and founder of Socos Labs, an AI and education firm, warns that the danger is not that AI itself causes dementia. Instead, it’s the long-term habit of substituting AI for the mental work that builds resilience in the brain.
“Your chatbot is not giving you Alzheimer’s,” Ming told Business Insider. Her concern is the cumulative impact of what she called chronic substitution—when people stop doing cognitive effort because “something will do it for you. ” leaving less of what the brain needs to protect itself later. “My worry is the cumulative impact of chronic substitution: when you stop doing the cognitive work because something will do it for you. you stop building the reserve that protects you later. ” she said.
As AI has moved deeper into everyday life and careers. other researchers and some tech leaders have warned about “deskilling”—the slow erosion of job skills and independent thinking. Ming goes further. saying that repeatedly outsourcing thinking to AI—especially among young people—could have real consequences for long-term brain health.
“That’s the group from whom I’m most concerned,” Ming said. “How you use AI, not how often, will determine its impact.”
Over time. Ming worries that routine outsourcing could reduce cognitive engagement and make it harder to build cognitive reserve. which she describes as the brain’s ability to adapt and remain resilient in the face of damage or aging. “The mechanism I’m describing is the classic ‘use it or lose it,’” she said.
To make the idea tangible, she compares AI to GPS. Ming says researchers have already seen signs that turning spatial navigation over to technology can come with mental costs.
In 2020. researchers at McGill University in Montreal found that people with greater lifetime GPS experience have worse spatial memory during self-guided navigation. Then. in a small study conducted over four months last year. MIT’s Media Lab found that people who used a large language model to help write essays showed weaker neural connectivity than participants who used search engines or no external tools. The MIT study also found that participants often couldn’t accurately quote passages from essays they had written minutes earlier.
In both cases, Ming describes what she calls cognitive offloading and surrender—“delegating the effortful part of a task to an external system so your own networks never have to do it.”
Her worry centers on the brain systems that are used when people think, focus, and learn. Ming said repeatedly outsourcing effort could mean engaging core functions less frequently. including the hippocampus—the brain area responsible for memory and learning—and prefrontal networks that help with attention. self-control. and decision-making.
“The hippocampus and prefrontal networks doing that work are precisely the systems that matter for cognitive aging,” Ming said.
She then delivered the comparison that ties her argument together: “GPT is the new GPS,” referring to OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT and suggesting it could erode cognitive skills if people increasingly rely on it to think for them.
The idea Ming leans on is not speculative. Research has repeatedly linked mentally stimulating activities to higher cognitive reserve and a lower risk of dementia. One analysis. conducted by the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) in 2020 on 12. 280 adults aged 50 and older. found that older people with higher cognitive reserve can expect a 35% lower risk of developing dementia compared to those with lower levels.
Ming said the principle that lifelong mental engagement delays cognitive decline is among the most replicated findings in the field. “The principle that lifelong mental engagement delays cognitive decline is some of the most replicated research we have,” she said.
But she also draws a clear boundary around what’s known. Ming said no biomarker study linking AI use to dementia pathology has been conducted yet. “Most of the data right now is ‘correlational or short-term,’” she said.
Still, she believes the moment matters. “However, she thinks now is the time to start analyzing this cohort, ‘while the behavior is still taking shape,’” she said.
Her fear is that waiting could make the evidence hard to separate from the habit itself. “By the time we have the dementia data, a generation will have already formed the habit,” she added.
Vivienne Ming Possibility Institute Socos Labs AI and education cognitive reserve dementia risk hippocampus prefrontal networks cognitive offloading deskilling ChatGPT GPT GPS study McGill University MIT Media Lab English Longitudinal Study of Ageing ELSA