Researchers at MIT have found that ChatGPT use can “harm an individual’s critical thinking over time,” reports Rachel Scully for The Hill. “They discovered that subjects who used ChatGPT over a few months had the lowest brain engagement and ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels,’” explains Scully.
Research Scientist Robert Ajemian speaks with National Geographic reporter Erika Engelhaupt about loci, an ancient technique that “transforms any familiar space into a storage system for new information.” “It’s shocking to me that this is so understudied when this was the dominant form of information storage for literally all of civilization, until the printing press,” says Ajemian.
A study by researchers at MIT examines how the use of large language models impacts the human brain, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. Research scientist Nataliya Kos'myna says the results “suggest large language models could affect our memory, attention and creativity.”
Prof. Tali Sharot speaks with Darian Woods of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money about why members of Gen Z may be feeling financial dysmorphia. “In order to be happy and satisfied, we need to see ourself progressing,” says Sharot. “That is true on every level, whether it is intellectually or whether it's financially.”
A study by Prof. Rebecca Saxe and her colleagues has found that the medial prefrontal cortex in infants is active when exposed to faces, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. “Maybe it’s not that [at] first babies do visual processing and only later are connected to social meaning,” says Saxe. “Maybe these brain regions are active because babies are responding to the social meaning of people and faces as early on as we can measure their brains.”
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with New York Times reporter Sopan Deb about how humans interact with artificial intelligence, specifically chatbots such as ChatGPT. “If an object is alive enough for us to start having intimate conversations, friendly conversations, treating it as a really important person in our lives, even though it’s not, it’s alive enough for us to show courtesy to,” says Turkle.
A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere explores “children’s exploitation of language ‘loopholes’ — instances in which kids technically do what adults ask of them but completely violate the true intent of the request,” reports Charlotte Hu for Scientific American. “Sometimes you don’t want to cooperate, but it might feel risky to outright refuse,” explains former postdoc Sophie Bridgers. “We started to be curious about the strategies [kids] used to handle this tension.”
A new study co-authored by Prof. David Rand found that there was a “20 percent reduction in belief in conspiracy theories after participants interacted with a powerful, flexible, personalized GPT-4 Turbo conversation partner,” writes Annie Duke for The Washington Post. “Participants demonstrated increased intentions to ignore or unfollow social media accounts promoting the conspiracies, and significantly increased willingness to ignore or argue against other believers in the conspiracy,” writes Duke. “And the results appear to be durable, holding up in evaluations 10 days and two months later.”
Prof. Ed Boyden and Prof. Li-Huei Tsai have “found that if gamma waves through non-invasive stimulation, were put back into baseline frequency, it could slow down the process in certain brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s,” reports Hansa Bhargava for Forbes.
MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel.
Forbes contributor Michael T. Nietzel spotlights the newest cohort of Rhodes Scholars, which includes Yiming Chen '24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo from MIT. Nietzel notes that Oluigbo has “published numerous peer-reviewed articles and conducts research on applying artificial intelligence to complex medical problems and systemic healthcare challenges.”
Yiming Chen '24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been named 2025 Rhodes Scholars, report Brian P. D. Hannon and John Hanna for the Associated Press. Undergraduate student David Oluigbo, one of the four honorees, has “volunteered at a brain research institute and the National Institutes of Health, researching artificial intelligence in health care while also serving as an emergency medical technician,” write Hannon and Hanna.
MIT researchers have created a detailed map showing how the human brain processes information while watching movies, reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. Using data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers uncovered 24 different brain networks that are “associated with specific aspects of sensory or cognitive processing,” explains Baisas.
Prof. Evelina Fedorenko speaks with Scientific American reporter Gary Stix about her research demonstrating that “language and thought are, in fact, distinct entities that the brain processes separately.” Speaking about how large language models could be used to help scientists better understand the neuroscience of how language works, Fedorenko explains that "there are many, many questions that we can now ask that had been totally out of reach: for example, questions about [language] development.”
Prof. David Rand speaks with Scientific American reporter Ben Guarino about why misinformation can spread so easily following a natural disaster like Hurricane Helene. “Disasters are ripe for conspiracy theories because there is a lot of uncertainty as things are unfolding and a lot of fear,” explains Rand.