As artificial‑intelligence use spreads, scholars are probing its impact on users. MIT professor Eric So’s new book The Collision: What AI Does to Us offers a comprehensive synthesis of both opportunities and costs.
So argues that heavy reliance on AI can cause cognitive atrophy—people lose the chance to develop and retain essential thinking skills. Research shows that learning improves dramatically when we wrestle with material, experience failure, and iterate, leading to deeper retention. An Anthropic study found that about half of college‑student queries were low‑effort requests for simple answers.
He opens with a personal anecdote: a colleague asked for help, he wrote half a sentence and let ChatGPT finish it, then felt he had removed his own thinking from the process. Students are similarly outsourcing homework to AI, missing the mastery‑building phase. So calls for a clearer understanding of how AI reshapes cognition and psychology, and offers practical guidance.
He labels the pull toward AI as “AI gravity.” Biologically we conserve mental energy; socially we feel pressure as others use AI to get ahead; and the difficulty of detecting AI use amplifies the pull. Companies now tie AI usage to performance reviews, and academia whispers that future employers will expect AI proficiency, creating a self‑fulfilling prophecy.
AI is not just expanding what we can do; it is changing who we are as thinkers. By removing the friction needed for foundational mastery, it erodes perseverance, offers instant relief that weakens memory, and its sycophantic yet persuasive nature reduces interpersonal connection.
So emphasizes the value of “productive struggle,” reframing struggle as formative rather than painful. He draws a parallel to post‑industrial society, where physical labor was replaced by machines and people had to redefine exercise as intentional effort; cognition needs a similar shift.
To preserve reasonable cognitive effort, So proposes four principles: 1) Embrace and seek out struggle; 2) Value who you are without AI; 3) Reinvest the time saved by AI into innovative work, learning, or family; 4) Use AI as a cognitive trainer rather than an answer machine, deliberately creating the friction of a tutor.
This is a societal challenge that demands serious attention.
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