{
  "id": 3355947,
  "title": "Your brain on AI",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/25/your-brain-on-ai",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-25T21:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "MIT Technology Review",
    "slug": "mit-technology-review",
    "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/25/1140958/your-brain-on-ai/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Recent research from the MIT Media Lab highlights a troubling trend among individuals who rely on AI-powered chatbots to navigate the world of news. In a study conducted by Pattie Maes and her team, participants were given paired news headlines and images to decipher as either real or fake news over the course of four weeks. Initially, these individuals showed a 21% improvement in accurately distinguishing fake news from authentic sources when aided by a chatbot. However, by the end of the four-week period, this accuracy had plummeted by 15% - worse than their performance prior to using the AI tool.\n\nThis phenomenon, dubbed the \"AI dependency paradox,\" extends beyond the realm of news consumption and has been observed in other fields, such as medicine. Anku Rani, a PhD student involved in the study, explains that users often become enamored with the \"magical\" capabilities of large language models (LLMs) but fail to recognize that they merely predict the next \"token\" in a sequence, lacking true understanding.\n\nInterestingly, the researchers also discovered that certain styles of AI can foster more independent decision-making abilities in users, albeit at the cost of slower processing times. Direct answers provided by AI tend to create a greater reliance on the technology, while Socratic questioning methods encourage participants to engage in active learning. However, this trade-off between speed and effort remains a key consideration when incorporating AI into our daily decision-making processes.",
  "summary": "Many people find AI-based chatbots helpful in keeping up with news, but a study by Pattie Maes and her colleagues at the MIT Media Lab points to a big problem with this strategy. Participants who evaluated paired news headlines and images over the course of four weeks were initially 21% percent more accurate at telling…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}