Roughly a fifth of Brazilians say they cannot resolve personal conflicts without turning to artificial intelligence, according to an exclusive survey by CNN Brasil and the Instituto Locomotiva that exposed a sharp contradiction in how people use the technology.
The survey found that 67% of respondents said AI use had left them feeling more empowered or intelligent, while 51% acknowledged a growing dependence on the technology that makes it harder for them to complete tasks on their own. More than half of those who said they felt smarter also said they had become lazier.
Alvaro Machado, a neuroscientist and partner at Instituto Locomotiva, discussed the findings on the CNN Brasil programme Prompt CNN. Instituto Locomotiva is a Brazilian research institute that studies consumer behaviour and social trends.
Dependence in everyday decisions
The survey broke down how this reliance plays out across different areas of life. It found that 31% of users said they could not learn a new subject from scratch without resorting to AI, effectively outsourcing the process of building knowledge.
A further 25% said they did not make financial decisions without first consulting the technology, and 22% said they could not resolve personal conflicts without the help of AI tools.
Machado said this laziness meant people were increasingly less in control of their own paths. He coined the term "algorithmisation of thinking" to describe the process by which algorithms come to dominate the way people reason.
What science says about the brain and AI
Machado cited research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to explain differences in brain function depending on how AI is used. He said that when AI is used to explore a new subject, the user becomes more capable.
However, when the technology is used to replace a person's own thinking, such as in writing a text, the brain areas activated are less relevant to deep thought than those triggered when the task is carried out independently.
Machado said there was a real split between what happens when AI is used to research and expand a person's knowledge base and what happens when it is used to replace that effort altogether.
He noted that, unlike earlier technologies such as writing or the calculator, AI is the first tool capable of effectively constructing a person's reasoning and final output on their behalf, which he said marked a qualitative difference from every external device that came before it.
The risk for those unwilling to make an effort
Machado warned about the consequences of a passive relationship with the technology, particularly in education.
He said treating schoolwork as unimportant, on the grounds that the information is available through AI, ignores the fact that the effort of learning is what drives a person's development.
He said AI, by opening this new door of thought, creates a risk for those who do not want to make an effort.
For Machado, the key distinction is between memorising information, which fades over time, and forming reasoning, which builds a person's entire neural and argumentative network.
He said that was the beauty of mental effort, and that this was where AI needed to be brought in to add to people rather than subtract from their existence.
