Exploring how artificial intelligence influences our memory, thinking, and independence.
This summary is based on the research article by Michael Gerlich, published in Societies (2025), titled "Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking: Cognitive Offloading and Its Consequences".
The study calls for educational strategies and AI design principles that support active, critical engagement rather than passive dependency. It’s especially relevant for educators, developers, and policymakers aiming to balance AI benefits with human cognitive development.
This study used ANOVA — a statistical method that shows how different groups compare — to explore how education, age, occupation, and gender affect two key abilities: critical thinking and deep thinking. The F-value tells us how strong the effect is, and the p-value shows if the result is statistically meaningful (p < 0.05 is considered significant).
The strongest finding was the role of education level. With an extremely high F = 1401.81 and p < 0.001, education clearly has a powerful effect. People with more advanced education tend to think more critically and engage more deeply.
Age also showed a solid influence (F = 12.92, p < 0.001). Older participants performed better in both thinking tasks, likely due to more life experience and reflective habits.
Occupation had a moderate but significant effect (F = 6.98, p < 0.001). Jobs that require analysis and decision-making seem to encourage deeper thinking.
In contrast, gender had no significant impact (F = 0.14, p = 0.71), meaning men and women show equal levels of critical and deep thinking. Cognitive ability appears to depend more on experience and background than gender.
Finally, the study found that higher AI tool usage was linked to lower critical thinking (p < 0.001), suggesting that relying too much on technology can reduce mental effort and independent reasoning.
In short: education, age, and job type shape how we think, while gender doesn’t matter much — and too much dependence on AI may weaken critical thinking over time.
This visual highlights the core findings: more frequent AI tool use increases cognitive offloading and is linked to lower critical thinking performance — a key concern for educators and technology users alike.
This study set out to answer two core questions: Does AI tool usage affect critical thinking? And does cognitive offloading help explain that effect? The evidence across statistical analyses and interviews clearly supports both hypotheses: More frequent AI use is linked to reduced critical thinking, and this relationship is largely explained by cognitive offloading — the habit of relying on AI instead of our own minds.
While AI tools offer incredible convenience, they can quietly erode our ability to analyze, reflect, and question. As we increasingly integrate AI into learning, work, and daily decisions, we must remain aware of these cognitive costs.
The challenge ahead isn't rejecting AI — it's learning how to use it without losing the skills that make us truly intelligent.