In June 2025 Nataliya Kosmyna, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, released early findings from a study that has raised some sobering concerns surrounding the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Her findings indicate that reliance on generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, may be weakening core human cognitive skills such as memory, creativity, perseverance, and critical thinking.[1]
Focused on young adults aged 18-39, the study asked participants to write several high school-level standardized testing essays. The 54 participants were divided into three groups and given different parameters for their essay writing. One group used ChatGPT to write their essays, another used Google’s search engine as an aid, and the last group wrote their essays without any assistance. Using EEG to record the brain activity across the writers, the researchers found that of the three groups in the study, those using ChatGPT showed the lowest engagement, specifically reduced activity in areas tied to memory, creativity, and decision-making.
The essays written with ChatGPT were not only shorter and more formulaic than those of the other groups—they also showed less originality and a diminished personal voice. Over time the group using generative AI also developed new habits: rather than wrestling with ideas, they increasingly relied on copy-and-paste shortcuts to finish their work.
Nataliya Kosmyna, the study’s lead author, pushed these findings into the public view early, before her study had been fully peer-reviewed, for one core reason: urgency. Alarmed by the risks to children, Kosmyna did not mince her words: “I am afraid that in six to eight months there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘Let’s do GPT kindergarten.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detrimental. Developing brains are at the highest risk.”[2]
It is clear that what is at stake here is not just writing skills, but the architecture of thought itself—whether we actively train the mind to reason and discern or allow shortcuts to dull those capacities.
When Shortcuts Help
The right shortcuts, however, do not weaken our mental capacities. Instead, they allow the mind to remain agile, conserving effort for the moments that matter most. For example, neural shortcuts rooted in pattern recognition and procedural memory are the reason we can tie our shoes without thinking through each step or drive along a familiar road while also carrying on a conversation.
From the very beginning of human history Satan’s method has been not brute force but subtle erosion of thought.
The problem is that unlike the natural shortcuts our brains create, the shortcuts aided by technology, such as AI, can begin to replace our critical thinking rather than enhance it. And because they reward us with the satisfaction of getting the task done quickly, we easily allow the replacement—trading thoughtful effort for convenience.
When Even Experts Falter
Not unique to essays handed over to generative AI, the field of medicine also offers a cautionary tale. Research has shown that doctors performing colonoscopies with AI-assisted tools detected more precancerous polyps than those working without it.[3] At first glance this seems like undeniable progress, and in many ways it absolutely is. But follow-up studies revealed something unsettling: when doctors later worked without AI, detection rates dropped. In other words, doctors’ diagnostic edge, their ability to detect, had dulled. It is a phenomenon that researchers now call “de-skilling.”
It begins to give rise to the fact that AI tools may sharpen performance in the short term, but overreliance erodes the very abilities it was meant to enhance. Anecdotally, most of us can recognize the same pattern in everyday life. For example, how quickly do we reach for a calculator when called upon to perform basic arithmetic, or how many phone numbers have we committed to memory since we were able to save contacts on our cell phones? Tools meant to assist can quietly hollow out the skills they replace.
Indeed, it leads to a searching question: If AI can dull the practiced eye of a physician, the very people trained to see what others cannot, how much more vulnerable are the rest of us when we allow algorithms to influence the way we think and make decisions each day?
Outsourcing Thought
And perhaps this is where the deepest danger lies—when generative AI becomes a shortcut for thought, we are no longer simply outsourcing tasks but outsourcing the very act of thinking itself.
The implication is unsettling because this is not merely a technological shift. Rather it represents a profound surrender of the human mind’s most essential work; its ability to engage, interpret, and choose, i.e., to think critically. Even more sobering is the reality that what we surrender in thought we eventually surrender in our relationship with God.
In other words, when we outsource thought, we outsource something deeper than productivity. We outsource what Scripture calls the heart.
In Hebrew, the word for heart (lēb) isn’t limited to emotions. It is the seat of thinking, deciding, and discerning. “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). The biblical heart is intellectual as much as it is emotional. It is the place where will, reason, and affection all converge.
This same thread runs into the New Testament with the Greek word kardia carrying forward the same meaning: the heart as both mind and emotion, thought and desire. It is the very word Jesus invokes when He commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).
Put together, Scripture insists that to love God with all our heart and mind means entrusting every part of our thought life, including our reasoning, memory, imagination, and discernment, into His care, so that even the way we think reflects His truth and love. But to outsource our heart and mind to anything else, to surrender judgment, testing, and discernment to convenience or culture, is to abandon the very faculty God entrusts us to guard.
The Vulnerability of Suggestibility
Modern cognitive science confirms what Scripture has long warned. When we bypass critical thinking, we not only exercise our minds less but weaken its resilience and leave ourselves far more open to unwelcome influences. Psychologists describe this as the cognitive miser tendency, which basically means that when our brains conserve mental resources by defaulting to the path of least resistance, we become far more likely to accept ideas without testing them.[4]
But this is more than science—it is spiritual warfare. An uncritical, passive mind is never a neutral space; it becomes an open doorway. From the very beginning of human history Satan’s method has not been brute force but subtle erosion of thought. He dulls the mind through distortion, weaving in just enough ambiguity to unsettle conviction. Indeed, his opening move in Eden was deceptively simple, as he asked, “Has God indeed said . . . ?” (Gen. 3:1), a question designed not to bring clarity but to erode confidence and destabilize trust in truth itself.
And this is why outsourcing thought is perilous. It does not simply make us cognitively lazy but also leaves us vulnerable. The bottom line is that each time we hand over the discipline of thinking to social media headlines, the noise of culture, or the convenience of generative AI, we loosen our hold on discernment and open the door to deception.
Renewing the Mind
It is against this backdrop that Paul’s words in Romans 12:2 land with startling urgency: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The danger, of course, is that this verse has become so familiar to us that we skim over it. We might frame it on a poster, perhaps pair it with a scenic background, and admire it as an ideal, yet fail to genuinely live it.
When generative AI becomes a substitute for thinking itself, we are no longer merely outsourcing tasks; we are outsourcing the very heart of what makes us human.
But Paul is not offering us a slogan. Rather, Paul is issuing a call to a continual, deliberate practice. In fact, the original Greek word for mind, nous, carries not only the sense of intellect but also judgment, perception, and conscience. From there the call deepens, for the renewing of that mind, expressed in anakainōsis, conveys an unending renovation, a process that reshapes thought and character on a continual basis rather than a single moment of reset. And it culminates in metamorphoō, a transformation so profound it is nothing less than a change of our very self, as in the astonishing metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.
In other words, Paul is describing a lifelong training regimen, a discipline of mind in which discernment becomes fluent, truth becomes second nature, and resilience is forged one deliberate thought at a time.
This is why Ellen White urged believers to spend “a thoughtful hour each day” reflecting on the closing scenes of Christ’s life.[5] Thoughtfulness here is not mere sentiment but the discipline of active, engaged thinking. Ultimately, when we wrestle with truth, turn it over in our minds, and allow it to reach our hearts, we become more discerning.
What’s at Stake
The findings of the MIT study point to something far deeper, to the way our minds are being shaped and reshaped today. At its core it reveals a crossroads for all of us. Will we be people who think, who stretch memory, creativity, perseverance, and critical thought, or will we allow those very muscles to atrophy in the name of convenience and efficiency?
The reality is that generative AI is not inherently corrupting. Like any tool, it can serve us wisely when kept in its proper place, sparking ideas, accelerating learning, and extending human capacity. But when it becomes a substitute for thinking itself, we are no longer merely outsourcing tasks; we are outsourcing the very heart of what makes us human.
And Scripture makes it clear that the heart and the mind are precious territory. They are the places where truth is tested, where trust is forged, and where love takes root (Prov. 4:23; Matt. 22:37; Rom. 12:2).
The Cost of Outsourcing Our Thoughts
It comes down to a question that is simple to ask but life-shaping to answer: To whom, or to what, are we entrusting our thoughts? Many of us give them to the noise of culture. Others place them in the hands of convenience, where even generative AI may promise efficiency but slowly erodes discernment. Yet Scripture offers us something far greater. It invites us to entrust our hearts and minds to the living God, who calls us to love Him fully with all our heart, soul, and mind and who renews our minds with fresh strength each day.
The answer to this question shapes not only what we do but who we are. It touches the core of our humanity, our capacity to think with clarity, to love with depth, to discern with wisdom, and to remain faithful when truth is tested. The danger is not only that we think less but that we surrender the very ground where love, trust, and faith take root. Yet into that danger comes hope. When we entrust our thoughts to God, He restores what was given away, renewing our minds and grounding us ever more deeply in His truth and love.
“Allow no one to be brains for you, allow no one to do your thinking, your investigating, and your praying. This is the instruction we need to take to heart today.”[6]
[1] Andrew R. Chow, “ChatGPT’s May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study,” Time, June 23, 2025, retrieved from https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, “Artificial Intelligence-assisted Colonoscopy and the Risk of Physician Deskilling” (2024), reported in Time: J. Ducharme (July 10, 2025); “AI May Be Making Doctors Worse at Diagnosing Cancer,” Time, retrieved from https://time.com/7309274/ai-lancet-study-artificial-intelligence-colonoscopy-cancer-detection-medicine-deskilling/.
[4] Keith E. Stanovich, “The Cognitive Miser: Ways to Avoid Thinking” What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 70-85, ISBN 9780300123852. OCLC 216936066.
[5] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), p. 83.
[6] Ellen G. White, Fundamentals of Christian Education (Nashville: Southern Pub. Assn., 1923), p. 307.
