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AI Is Changing How We Think. Here Is How to Stay in Charge

Most of us use AI the wrong way, warns David Rock. Here is what the research says, and what to do instead.

Muhammad Jamilu Abdullahi 6 min read
Cover: a navy head in profile against an amber sun, its brain half organic folds and half circuit lines, beside the headline "AI is changing how we think"

A familiar evening

It is 10pm and your report is due in the morning. The spreadsheet still makes no sense, so you paste it into a chatbot and ask for key insights. Ten minutes later, neat bullet points are sitting in your slides.

The next day, your manager asks a simple follow-up question about one of those insights. You freeze. You delivered the answer, but you never did the thinking.

If that scene feels familiar, you are in large company. A Google and Ipsos survey found 88 per cent of Nigerian adults have used an AI chatbot, against a 62 per cent global average. Some 93 per cent said they use AI to learn or understand complex topics.

The expert's warning

David Rock is co-founder and chief executive of the NeuroLeadership Institute. He wrote the book Your Brain at Work and is a keynote speaker at UN Skills Fest 2026. In a UN News feature published on 29 October, he argued that many of us are handing AI our thinking, not just our tasks.

Rock describes a shift from "AI FOMO", the rush to adopt generative AI, to an "AI hangover". Organisations raced to roll out the tools, he says, often before understanding the long-term effects. Now the consequences are becoming clearer.

His most striking estimate is that perhaps only 5 to 10 per cent of workers use AI as intended. That minority hands routine work to AI to free up mental capacity. Most people do the opposite, outsourcing analysis, evaluation and even decisions, which he warns erodes judgement.

He also sees a crisis of attention. Messages, notifications and AI-generated summaries pile up faster than our brains can process them. He likens it to the arrival of email, only on a far larger scale.

Then there is connection. Rock cites research suggesting that heavy users of AI companions may feel lonelier, not less lonely.

A four-week MIT Media Lab and OpenAI experiment with 981 participants points the same way. Heavier daily ChatGPT use went with more loneliness and less socialising, though the link does not prove cause.

His remedy is metacognition, which simply means thinking about your own thinking. Use AI to challenge and widen your view, he says, while people stay in charge of judgement. As he puts it: "When your brain's not in the game, you very quickly lose those skills."

What the research shows

Rock's warning matches a growing body of research, although the evidence is still young. Four studies stand out.

StudyYearWho took partKey finding
MIT Media Lab, "Your Brain on ChatGPT" (preprint)202554 participants writing essaysChatGPT users showed the weakest brain connectivity and struggled to quote their own essays
Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University (CHI 2025)2025319 knowledge workers, 936 real work examplesMore confidence in AI went with less critical thinking; effort shifted to checking AI output
Bastani and colleagues, PNAS2025Nearly 1,000 high school maths students in TurkeyOpen chatbot access lifted practice scores, but exam scores fell 17% once it was removed
Cash and colleagues, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (review)2026Review of existing studiesOffloading can erode specific skills, though core abilities such as working memory seem resilient

The Turkish study holds the most useful lesson. A second version of the chatbot, designed to give hints rather than answers, largely avoided the learning loss. AI that does the work for you can weaken you, while AI that coaches you need not.

The other side

None of this means AI is making us stupid. The same research shows real gains when people use it well.

A 2025 study led by MIT's Jackson Lu, reported by the American Psychological Association, looked at 250 consulting employees in China. Those given ChatGPT produced more creative work, especially those with strong metacognition, the very skill Rock recommends.

The Trends in Cognitive Sciences review also cautions against panic. As reported by PsyPost, its authors judge a fundamental loss of intelligence unlikely. What fades is the specific skills we stop practising, and how AI is designed and used makes the difference.

The evidence has clear limits too. The MIT brain study is a preprint, not yet peer reviewed, and only 18 people completed its final session. The Microsoft survey relied on self-reports and cannot prove cause and effect.

Rock's 5 to 10 per cent figure is offered as a rough estimate, and the UN piece cites no survey behind it. Treat it as an expert's warning, not a measurement.

How to keep your brain in the game

These are practical habits, not research findings, though several echo the studies above.

  1. Try first, then ask. Write your own formula, SQL query or outline before you open the chatbot. Michael Gerlich of the Swiss Business School, quoted by the APA, recommends this order, then asking AI for feedback on your attempt.
  2. Ask for hints, not answers. Tell the chatbot not to solve the problem but to nudge you towards the solution. Better still, ask it to quiz you on the topic until you get it right.
  3. Verify before you trust. Check AI figures against your source data and recalculate a few by hand. Open every reference it gives you, because checking is now part of the job.
  4. Choose what to hand over. Let AI format tables, tidy meeting notes and draft routine emails. Keep the analysis, the judgement and the final recommendation for yourself.
  5. Protect deep-work time. Block 60 to 90 minutes a day with notifications off and no summaries. You cannot think deeply while being interrupted every few minutes.
  6. Explain it back. After AI helps you, explain the answer in your own words or teach it to a colleague. If you cannot, you have not learnt it yet.
  7. Keep people close. Talk problems through with classmates, mentors and colleagues. Let a chatbot help you prepare for those conversations, not replace them.

Closing thought

AI is not going away, and nobody should wish it away. For Nigerian learners and professionals, it can be a patient tutor, a research assistant and a writing coach in one.

Rock compares this moment to the early days of cars, before traffic laws existed. The rules for AI are still being written, and the most important ones are personal.

So use AI to stretch your thinking, never to skip it. The goal is not to be faster than everyone else. It is to stay sharp enough to know when the machine is wrong.

Sources

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