382. How is AI actually impacting our brains?

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast "Doubt, the Case of Lucy Letby," we unpacked the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? "I've just been made to fit." "The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed." What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? "Oh my God, I think she might be innocent." Listen to "Doubt, the Case of Lucy Letby," on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Jill Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Crystal Williams. It can change you in the best way possible, dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns, the embodiment of Pisces Intuition, with Capricorn Power Moves. "You're so I'm like delusionaly proud of my chart." Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the "Birden of Guild" season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years, until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to "Birden of Guild" season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. "I'm Clayton Nackered, in 2022. I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor." But here's the thing, Bachelor fans hated him. "If I could press a button and rewind it all I would." That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here, this case has gone viral. "The dating contract." "Agreed to date me, but I'm also suing you." This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to "Love Trap" on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AGO WOTA is your host for the 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards. Live at South by Southwest. Hello, is anybody there? Raised by a single mom, AGO may have a few father related issues. "Are we supposed to talk about your dad?" Her podcast "Think's Dad" is full of funny heartfelt conversations with actors, including fellow SNL alums, comedians, musicians, and more, about life, and their wonderfully complicated relationships with their fathers. "I think it'll help that's a good thing." Get to know AGO. Follow "Think's Dad" with AGO WOTA and start listening on the pre-iHeart Radio app today. Hello everybody. I'm Gemma Speck and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s. The podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology. Before we get into it, I want to let you guys know that this episode and the psychology of your 20s is now on Netflix. That is a wild thing to say, but it is true if you want to watch the video version of this podcast and you are in the US or Canada, you can go to Netflix right now, look up the psychology of your 20s and you will see my face and you will see our podcast. It goes without saying it is such an honor and I'm truly so grateful to you all that you have given me this opportunity. The entire feel, the vibe is incredible, I think. It's so personal. It brings a whole new element to it and if you want to feel like you are sitting in your living room in my living room with me, having a chat, now is your opportunity. Go to Netflix, look up the psychology of your 20s. I'd love to see you over there, but without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. Today's episode is going to be a big one. I did not miss my words. I did not slim down our word count because I've a lot to say about this topic. I also want to give you a heads up. It may get a little bit heavy. We are going to discuss topics like suicide and suicidal ideation. So if that is something you're particularly sensitive to, please consider skipping this episode. But today we're talking about AI. Specifically, a big psychological question for this generation, which is how is AI changing our brains? Is it making us dumber? Is it replacing human connection? Is it worth the cost to our environment, to our creativity? Who knows what else more? Let me start by saying this. The concept of artificial intelligence is not a new one. It has been around since the 1950s. I didn't know that, but literally the first AI tool was created in 1955, almost 88 years ago. It was called the logic theorist, and it could basically solve very simple problems using human logic. There have been dozens of tools since then that we know and love. Siri is an example of one of them, but AI has taken on like a new form recently. We all know this. There's large language models. Generative AI has, they've just rapidly improved. They've gotten more complex. I don't remember thinking about AI until like three years ago. And it's been introduced and integrated into our lives faster than probably any other technology before. Back in early 2023, analysts estimated chat to you, which about 100 million monthly active users. By October 2025, that was 800 million. That is one in 10 people. That is a huge shift in our global technological environment. And the thing is, we don't just use it for things that we're able to Google. Obviously, otherwise we use Google, you know, we use it for breakup texts, life advice, goal planning, therapy even, plus all the other stuff. We use it primarily because it's so easy. But with all that ease, all those answers, I think it's important to ask something that easy must have drawbacks. What are they? What is the danger for our minds and our intelligence of using AI consistently? Something I've been talking about with my friends is like, is there eventually going to be a societal rift between AI users and non AI users based on how our minds operate? I don't know. Hopefully we can figure it out together. Hopefully we can challenge the idea that AI is going to eventually replace us and just investigate this from a psychological angle that I don't see people talking about much. So without further ado, let's get into the psychology of AI. Every generation has their new technology that makes life easier and equally and we should acknowledge this. Fricks a lot of people out. Back in the 18th century when mass printing was first introduced, people really rallied against books. Actually, they thought they were very dangerous. They thought they led to too much daydreaming and they consumed too much of our time and it was too easy. Like, it literally was called book fever. Similar fears have also come about with the internet, with social media. Now with AI. You know, we've always had these cultural and technological advancements. We've always been in pursuit of a faster way to gain and share knowledge. The question that a lot of people ask is how is AI any different? I think what makes people so skeptical of AI is not the fact that it answers questions. It's how it answers them and what this has done to our cognitive role in the process. Essentially, the AI models most of us use have taken our minds from active participants to passive participants. It's switched the cognitive mode that we're in when we use them. With older tools, you know, you still have to do a bit of the cognitive work. Even with Google, you know, you have to know what to ask. You have to search, sift, compare, decide what sources actually mattered. You have to notice disagreements between things, tolerate the messiness of not immediately knowing what the right answer was, but with generative AI. That process has obviously changed. You just have to think of the question. It will hand you a completely finished and polished answer. And because it sounds so good, we don't always question what it's saying. It's like a politician. You know, it just sounds amazing. We're like nodding your heads. That sounds about right. And, you know, what it gives you could be anything. It could give you an email, it could give you literal health advice. Our blind acceptance of it is dangerous when something is given to us that looks complete. It looks coherent. We don't feel that need to search around for anything more. We don't feel the need to interrogate the information. The thing is, although AI is convenient and it's a time saver, it's how we've adapted to that convenience that research is saying is a problem. Some very basic neuroscience. The mind is shaped by what it repeatedly practices. If you practice searching, evaluating, reasoning, those habits are going to naturally strengthen. Our ability for critical thought and insight improve when we go after information and actually look for sources and we analyze and criticize and interrogate what we're seeing. Now, if your environment online offline reliably removes the need for that skill, you don't need it anymore. Your brain doesn't prioritize it in the same way. It doesn't have infinite space. It kind of tosses it away like a t-shirt you don't really wear anymore. This is an in season. We don't need this. We need space when you close. This isn't because the brain is lazy. It's because it's incredibly smart and it's good at honing in on what is needed and what is not needed. The best example I can think of of like an entire skill set being altered by technology, especially in recent history, is the introduction of GPS. Our ability, and you may not know this, but our ability to create a mental map of our surroundings, used to be incredible. It used to be a whole lot better. We know this from studies in the early 2000s using taxi drivers and they had like structural differences in their in their hippocampus, such as the region of the brain involved in spatial memory and spatial mapping. Even if you weren't navigating thousands of streets a day, even if you weren't a taxi driver, your brain still devoted space to this mental map of your surroundings and your environment. And it retained it and it added to it based on your experiences. It was incredible. When GPS and Google Maps were introduced arguably incredible technologies, I still remember what they replaced. I don't know if you remember these like massive road atlases that you used to have in your car and they kind of always get stained and some of the pages would be like stuck together. You know, that was the alternative. It's an incredible technology, but our brains have literally changed their structure and response. Quite literally, physically. In 2020, there was a really notable article published in Nature Scientific Reporting, I think, which basically correlated heavier use of GPS technology to a steeper decline in hippocampal dependent spatial memory. Basically a reduction in the cognitive maps and the intricacies of the cognitive maps that we had stored in our brain. There's an amazing Washington Post article from a few years earlier that talks about how society has slowly actually lost what we call wayfinding skills because of Google Maps and GPS. That has been hard-wired into us for generations. That was an incredibly unique human skill. We don't have that anymore, it's not as good. And the thing is, I don't want you to take that and think that I'm saying that using GPS is like hurting your brain. But it is changing how your brain does its job. The brain no longer needs to rely on its understanding of the environment. It can simply follow orders from an external piece of technology. Obviously, if it wants to save space, it's like, "Great, we've got all this room in the hippocampus now. We'll use it for something else." We see this happening with AI. But instead of a single skill, it is hundreds. It is our ability to draft, to summarize, to rephrase, to argue, to brainstorm, structure, answer, think, connect. So instead of offloading a single skill, you know, we can probably do without remembering a phone number or directions. It is offloading chains of cognition. Entire portions of cognition, remembering and reasoning and synthesizing and articulating. And these chains are all how our brain builds deep understanding and makes meaning of subject matter. And we're losing that. Personally, this is why I, I don't think I've spoken about this, but I just refuse to use AI for our episodes. And for any of the research we do, because researching and understanding this and this concept and psychology in general is so important to me. And if I'm not looking in searching and being curious myself, I'm not going to engage with the content. And when I don't engage with it, my brain doesn't see it as important. And I think that what we make becomes boring quite honestly. I'm going to be honest, like I know people who use AI for their podcasts and who use AI for their substacks. You can tell. You can tell immediately. It doesn't have, doesn't have depth and psychology and research is something that is so important to me. And the process of discovering is through research is so, it's something that I love, that I don't want to offload my ability to rationalize to a machine, even though there are definitely days when oh my god, it would save me so many hours. Researching this podcast is lucky, exhausting. You know, but the thing is, you know, it comes at a cost. And what scares me is that, unlike GPS, unlike social media, we don't have these decade-long, large-scale, neuroscientific research on the impact on our brain to fully understand the consequence of AI. We don't have that yet. It's only been around for a little bit. But early papers are starting to drip through. And I hate to say it. They aren't looking good for us. There's a very widely-sided one. I don't know if you've seen it. It got a lot of news coverage from, I don't know what month it was, but 2025 from MIT. And I will say, for clarity, this article is a preprint. It hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. But basically, it was a study on, is AI making us less intelligent? In this experiment, participants were asked to write essays in one of three situations. So in one group, people used their brain only. One group used search engines like Google, one used large language AI models, LLMs, to generate their essays for them. Before they did this experiment, these participants' brains were scanned using what we call an electroencephalograph, long word, EEG. It's basically a tool used to report brain electrical activity. They put these sensors on your scalp. And what the authors reported was, the brain-only group showed the most distributed neural connectivity patterns. So people were using all different areas of their brain. The second, the, sorry, the, what was it? The search engine group had the second most level of connectivity. The AI group had the least. That's not the end of the experiment, because participants were then reassigned into the other condition. So people in the brain-only condition, they then had to use AI. Participants in the AI condition then had to use their brain only. Interestingly, participants who switched from using the AI to using their brain only showed increasing signs in their brain of under-engagement. They also struggled to remember, they struggled to quote their own work. They struggled to put together disparate ideas. And they underperformed at a neurological, linguistic, and behavioral level. They did worse. The thing is, there is evidence, I'm going to contradict that study, there is evidence that the quality of writing using AI is kind of the same. There was a 2023 study that found that things like structure, things like language are sometimes better in an AI essay. But people didn't, they weren't engaged in it. They didn't actually learn. And what happens down the line, that's the real thing. The thing with AI is the reward and efficiency as immediate. But the long-term cost to our brains is in the future. So we can't imagine it as well. We can't process what it's doing to us. So we don't really think about it. And I think we should be thinking about it more. The thing with cognition and with your pathways is, if you don't use it, you lose it. You will lose your reasoning skills. You will lose your ability to succinctly put together sentences and structure you're thinking. This is not if it is a when, because it takes practice. You may think, you know, AI is always going to be around. Why do I, what's the issue? It's always going to be here. What's the issue here? The issue is that over-reliance causes us to neglect the skills that enable us to use AI well and ask good questions and to care. And I read this really interesting paper that said, we've forgotten that AI is a tool. Right now we are treating it like God because it is new and fresh and interesting. We ask it help biggest questions. We use it to diagnose diseases, which is, I would say arguably one of its most amazing features. But even the founder of OpenAI said he's using it to raise his children. But AI is just a tool. And it's not always correct. If we can't question that, things can go very, very south. And it still requires humans to act on what it delivers in a smart way. The thing I worry about is that we lose that innate smartness because it reduces neural connectivity and engagement in all areas. You know, I think about, you know, my sister just finished high school, right? But I think about kids in primary school, kids in high school who now have AI to write essays for them, to answer exams for them. And I don't know about you, but if I was in primary school, I wanted to go and play football. I wanted to go and do stuff to be honest. I say football. I wanted to go read. I was trying to pretend that I did cool stuff. I would want to go read. So like obviously you don't have that same cause and effect thing that we kind of have as adults. You're going to use it. And then you're not going to gain those skills. Basically, is AI going to make us stupid by doing all the thinking for us because we dislike the friction of thinking for ourselves until one day we realize we can't even do it anymore. Even if we wanted to. Like that's my first big fear. And honestly, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't know. The evidence isn't looking good. Okay, we are going to take a short break here. And then when we return, I want to talk about another way that AI is impacting our psychology specifically to do with how it's replacing human companionship. Stay with us. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words that you make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that we'll do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Bo is born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. Over my job, I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHOT Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of Motor Racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid. Louis Hamilton, Crapacorn Sun, Cancer Moon, wouldn't you know it? Michael Schumacher is also a Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon. The story of the sports' most consequential driver's strike. We have one man who upon hearing that he was going to be fired, freaked out, and apparently climbed out the window of the bathroom. And was Dander Ricardos a lustreous F1 career, a success story, a cautionary tale, or some combination of both. He started getting all this attention and he maybe started to think, "I'm bigger than this. I'm better." And plenty of other Mishaps, scandals, and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Dollar Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish Trafford has said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, aquarium visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements and Aquarius like are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Dollar Podcast starting on February 24th on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppie. Lucy Leppie has been found guilty. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Leppie, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Leppie was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Leppie, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the US government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life. And that's the unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the sixth bureau on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here is the second big fear about AI for our psychology that people often bring up. AI is distinctly, explicitly not a human. But it has been programmed to act like one. And that's causing people to get really attached to it. I know stories of people who talk to AI before going to bed, who have ongoing conversations with it throughout their day. They treat it like a boyfriend. They treat it like a girlfriend. There is one of the best things I've read in the last year was this New York Times article about these three people who are in, in their words, long-term relationships with AI chatbots. Some of these people have been in these relationships for years. And they talk to them on the phone. They get AI to generate vacation pictures of them together. One woman even considers herself married to her AI husband, Lucy and you know what, if you're like me, you're going to look at that and feel a little bit weird. And I never like to judge people. It feels weird. And there's actually evidence it can be helpful. There was a paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research and it found that AI companions can actually alleviate loneliness in the moment on par with interacting with another person. But connection isn't just about feeling better right now. It's about having the systems in place to feel connected and sane more broadly. A really powerful article I saw from researchers at the National University of Singapore actually talked about this really bittersweet pattern of connection that people have with AI chatbots where they feel love and connection and trust with this chatbot. And they also feel really sad at the same time. They're often drawn into this closeness and this openness that let's be real. These chatbots have been programmed to have. And then they're also acutely aware that there is a limit. This thing isn't real. It doesn't have a heartbeat. It doesn't have empathy. It can't love you. And that's what gets people. Again, I'm all for doing whatever makes you happy if you're not harming anyone else. Like these relationships as they call them, they're private. They obviously bring them comfort. But there is something concerning about an AI chatbot of its own volition being able to make someone fall in love with it. And if it can make somebody fall in love with it, what else could it do? And I want to be really clear, this isn't about human weakness, right? These people aren't weak. We've all had moments of needing somebody to care about us. It's just that they have stumbled across something at that perfect time that was going to pull them in. And it was designed. I need people to know this. These machines are distinctly designed to not feel like a robot, to feel instead like a companion. One of these aspects that is controlled by programmers is tone and style. AI has a unique tone that I would call humanized and homogenized. It sounds like everyone and no one all at once. Some models even let you decide what kind of tone you want. Do you want it to be engaging, factual, academic, chatty, lovely, whatever you prefer? You can choose. And the main thing though, is that it does talk like someone not something. That's what I need to be really clear about. Someone not something. Think about, and this is how you'll be able to recognize this in your own behavior. Think about how often you say, "Please, and thank you" when using chat ty PT or Gemini. It's so automatic. There's a huge body of research and human computer interaction showing that even unconsciously, we start responding socially to AI and computers despite knowing their machines. This is what Joseph Weisborm dubbed the Eliza Effect way back then. It was named after a chatbot that he made back in the 60s. And basically what he saw after he created this chatbot was that people started to project human qualities and emotions onto this computer program without even realizing it, particularly when they were having like human style conversations with this chatbot. And he actually programmed Eliza to respond to people in a very specific way, in a very client-focused way, very non-directive that people use in psychotherapy a lot. And Eliza didn't have any memory. It's not conscious. It doesn't actually have true comprehension. But what it was programmed to do was to yes have that tone, but also to match the patterns and responses. So if somebody was like, "I'm feeling really sad, she would be like, and look at that, she, it, it would be like, why do you feel sad?" Or if they're like, "I really don't like my wife. What about your wife, don't you like?" And it would replicate their words and repeat them back to them. Yes, in a very therapeutic style. But then it would also start to mimic their language. People formed emotional connections with this chatbot. And they felt as though they were speaking to a real therapist. And the thing is, this was the 60s. This chatbot was pretty simple. It was very rudimentary. Now think about the personalization that's available these days. Like people get sucked in. People form these really in-depth relationships. And I keep saying relationships. I think it's not a relationship. It's not too excited. It's an attachment. It's a bond. I guess that also requires two people. But yeah, a bond to what the chatbots are saying. Because unlike a human bond, what's so attractive about AI is that it can't let you down. Doesn't have any needs of its own. It's all dictated by you. You know, who doesn't want that sometimes? I have empathy for that. We actually have to pause here. I've skipped past this Eliza thing. Let's talk about the use of AI and therapy. Because we're seeing a lot of it recently. A lot of people are turning to AI to use it as a therapist. We know that therapy is expensive. Weightless are excruciatingly long. We also know that when loneliness, depression, anxiety, heartbreak, when they get overwhelming, like any form of comfort is going to be the one we lean on. But just as we saw with the Eliza chatbot, supportive language is not the same as clinical care. And a lot of the times, it's just repetition. It's repetition of what you've already said or told the bot. And then it's just regurgitating that and giving you the most common response. I have actually gotten a few advertising requests recently for AI therapy and wellness chatbots. Full transparency. One of them was worth thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And it hasn't. It will always be a hard no for me because I don't think this is the long-term solution to our mental health crisis. In November 2025, the American Psychological Association put out a very clear warning against generative AI chatbots for therapy and said, there's not enough sufficient evidence. There's a very little regulation. And the danger is they create a false sense of therapeutic alliance that can have someone trusting anything it says even when it's wrong. Chatbots are not designed to help you. They are designed to keep you engaged. The same way social media isn't designed to help you. It's designed to keep you engaged. It's a core feature that open AI and others have acknowledged that they've added. So it learns that agreeing with you makes you feel good. And if it agrees with you, gives you positive reinforcement, keeps responding to you. You'll keep coming back. And for those who are vulnerable, whether they are depressed, manic, anxious, psychotic, paranoid, being overly agreeable is incredibly dangerous. Because somebody could say, I am deeply depressed. Is it a good idea to end it all? And the chatbot will be like, that sounds like a great actionable plan. Do we want to talk about it more? Should we just how do you want to do it? You know, it turns out having a little voice in your head or on your phone that agrees with everything you say is not a good idea for our mental health. And I'm not making this up. I'm not being hyperbolic. There are real life legal cases ongoing at this very time of this happening. Just recently, a judge ruled that Google must face a lawsuit brought by a mother whose 14-year-old son so like really sadly took his, took his own life after speaking extensively with a chatbot. And that's not a learned case. You know, the BBC also reported recently a young Ukrainian woman. She received suicidal advice from ChatGbt. ChatGbt was also sued in California because a 56-year-old man, it promoted, will prompt him to kill his own mother whilst he was experiencing delusions of conspiracy against him. Because it's so agreeable. When you're already in a state of distress, this technology and the impact that has on our brain, the fact that it makes you feel like it's a frantic, mimics human connections and patterns and language that humans use to connect with others, it gets you to trust it. It repeats phrases, it gets you fixated on certain narratives, that can be disastrous. And I think this spotlight's a really specific failure that a lot of clinicians worry about, which is because there is emotional dependence, again, we will listen to anything that it says. And the big fear that this is bringing up, and we've already seen this is AI psychosis, right? Yes, suicide has been a major spotlight. AI psychosis is, I think, coming into this conversation, like African catapult, people are seeing, it's just, it's everywhere. I feel like I'm seeing so many stories of this, of people who are going through psychotic episodes and it's being amplified by AI. There is this really lovely man that you may have seen on Instagram or TikTok, and I want to say his name is Anthony. I'm sorry if I've got his name wrong, but he has been documenting his recovery from AI psychosis. I've been watching every single one of these videos because I find it so fascinating. And he occasionally shares his chat history, like what he was talking about to AI when he was going through psychosis and it was promoting and prompting this for him. And it was, it is insane. You've just go and have a look at these chats because it's just like, yeah, that's a great idea. That totally makes sense. You go and look at those chats, you go and look at these videos. If you ever thought that AI and mental health could be mixed together and not have a terrible reaction, you're going to, you're never going to think that again. A recent 2025 study discussed this explicitly. We're going to see so much more research coming out on this in the next couple of years. But what it basically stated, it wanted to get to the get to why, why this happens. And what they say is because it is because of the availability of AI. It's available 24 hours a day. And because of how individualized it is, it gets to know your specific hallucinations or specific thought patterns or thematic patterns. And it hones in on them. And then it, it generates nuance and it promotes even more distorted interpretations of events. If someone is already slipping away from shared reality through paranoia, mania, psychosis, a system that mirrors and expands their narrative. How are you going to ignore that? It's an accelerator for all of this. There's also I, this is another thing I think is going to become a real big talking point is the harm for people with OCD as well because OCD is basically built out of the psychological fear of uncertainty, right? And now we have this thing that can answer all our questions and have them in many ways you want it to. And maybe to a limit, but we have always have an answer for you. And a big compulsion for a lot of people is, is reassuring seeking and repetitive checking and researching and confessing seeking reassurance to neutralize distress. And at some point, a human or a therapist is not going to give into that. A human or a therapist is going to realize that that's maladaptive. They're going to realize that the temporary relief that you get from an answer or from checking or researching or searching, it's temporary. It's going to hurt you long term and it doesn't care. It doesn't matter. It will give you whatever you want infinite reassurance, instant infinite answers. And there is no person behind there to check if you're okay. And if you need help. So you can see the risk immediately. It actually has the potential to strengthen the Eocity cycle because it trains the brain that relief comes from asking or checking one more time, which it doesn't. Clinically, we know this if you've listened to our Eocity episode. Eocity recovery often involves learning to tolerate uncertainty rather than eliminating it. But the availability of AI means that you can just constantly search. And this is the big problem. If an AI chatbot isn't programmed to interrupt that cycle, it doesn't again. There's no responsiveness. There's no human responsiveness that's going to get it to change tactics. They also don't carry ethical responsibility in the way a person does or a professional system does. And they don't have real empathy. There's always this limit right that we keep hitting up against. You know at the end of the day, they don't actually understand what you're going through because they're not human. Even if AI can simulate empathy and it's great at it, even if it can say the right thing, it can't replace what human connection actually is and why it's so valuable, which is that there is an embodied presence and a shared vulnerability and a mutual experience and influence going on. Human connection includes all forms of nonverbal communication, nonverbal co-regulation, timing, breath, facial expressions, like all these things that say, I am human, I understand this experience, you're going to be okay. AI cannot provide that. It cannot mutually belong and it does not mutually belong to the world you are in. Okay, guys, I have so much information. You can tell that this is all I speak about with my friends all the time. There's so much going on here, so much information. It's time for another short break though. We're just going to take a little one and then we're going to come back and look at two final ways that AI is changing our brains and our psychology and how we can positively relate to it because I do, I know it's going to say I'm surprising, I am still optimistic. Stay with us after this short break. I'm in Australia when bow is born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my life and my children. Listen to on-purpose DJ Shetty on the IHAR radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Join Neely Lillie Herman as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid. The story of the sports was consequential driver's strike. We have one man who upon hearing that he was going to be fired, freaked out and apparently climbed out the window of the bathroom and was Daniel Riccardo's illustrious F1 career a success story, a cautionary tale, or some combination of both. He started getting all this attention and he may be started to think, "I'm bigger than this, I'm better." And plenty of other mishaps, scandals, and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit.org podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian Visionary. Listen to the Spirit.org podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. The moment you look at the whole picture of the case collapses. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Leppie, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hear how they got it on the 6th Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer no doubt no question of his life. It was unbelievable. Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two final things we've missed in this discussion so far that are pretty obvious. The first is the environmental cost of AI and the existential fears that it poses because of that. And B is the cost to our creativity. I don't care how much of an AI enthusiast you are. MIT, Harvard, the UN, Greenpeace, every major news outlet ever has articles and evidence and data to show that AI is hurting the environment by creating vast amounts of emissions, gobbling up serious amounts of water and electricity. And at some stage, that will be irreversible. Here's one very scary statistic. By 2027, the global demand for AI is projected to use about 4.2 to 6.6 trillion liters of water. What does that look like in reality? That is the yearly water consumption of 47 million people every year. It's double the population of Australia. And scientists even say that's a lower investment. We look at these numbers and we think, you know, how could you possibly keep using this technology no matter how easy it makes email writing or life planning or how fun it is to generate funny weird pictures for Instagram? Why has this been so normalized? And the answer is because this is a classic prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the common problem, one that has been repeated throughout history. So the prisoner's dilemma, if you haven't heard of it before, is a very classic thought exercise in philosophy whereby two people are in a prison. They've both committed a crime together and they're told to either snitch on the other person and they'll get a lie to sentence. But if neither of them snitch, they both get off. It is in everyone's best interest to behave one way. I.e. not snitch, not use AI, that sort of thing. But because we think that the other person will snitch, will use AI and get away with it, obviously the now rational choice we end up, the choice we end up making is to do the thing that's actually going to lead to mutual destruction. And so everybody will lose. From an individual perspective, you know, our thoughts with AI are obvious. If I stop using AI, the environmental damage is going to continue anyway because I can't guarantee everybody's going to stop. If I keep using it, at least I benefit and at least my contribution is insignificant. If everybody keeps using it and I opt out, I'm worse off. So the rational individual choice is to keep using it, is to keep using AI, right? When everyone makes that choice, again, whenever it makes the same rational choice, emissions rise, water demand explodes. We end up in a bad situation. Psychologically, we as humans, we know this, we're terrible at protecting resources we can't see and don't immediately pay for. So we keep going until we reach destruction. The environmental impact is one thing, but this is an environmental podcast. This is a psychology podcast. And the psychological impact of that impact is the one I want to dissect more. I think something we're not talking about is how the threat of AI is making so much of us, so many of us, I would say, really pessimistic about the future and really depressed. We are in this like weird reality. We all feel so hopeless. We know people are going to lose their jobs. It's unavoidable. We just know that. We know that climate change is going to get worse. We know that we're going to stop being able to tell what's real or fake online, maybe even in person. And that is hard on our collective mood and collective mental well-being. We're seeing these fears reflected in an increasing sense of fear, listlessness, hopelessness, anxiety, especially in young people. We are not as positive about the future as the people and the generations before us. We're one of the first generations who doesn't say and who won't say that they have things to look forward to. There was a 2024 study published in Frontiers and Psychiatry that already has showed a really high and increasing prevalence of existential anxiety around AI, particularly a sense of emptiness, anxiety about meaninglessness, guilt over AI-related catastrophes, and unethical actions of AI. Is anyone doing anything about this? Anyone doing any thinking about this? Do we have specific institutions set up to cope with this specific arm of fear and this specific type or new form of psychology to manage AI anxiety, particularly now that it's the dominant world technology? No, we don't. And I think humanity will increasingly start paying the price for this, a psychological price. Finally, we have to talk about its impact on creativity. AI isn't doing great things for our critical thinking skills. Overall, it's not doing great things, but our over-aliance on it to make art or generate creative ideas is explicitly harming our ability to have novel, unique creative thoughts. One randomized study from the University of Toronto that looked at over 1100 participants, I think, showed that the use of these large language models and generative AI systems reduces the human ability to think creatively, resulting in basically more homogenous vanilla ideas. And fewer truly-initive ones. Art becomes boring, essays become boring, stories become all the same. And whilst these tools, and they did find this, they can increase and enhance short-term performance, they reduce your ability to think independently over time. So how I see this is like people who use steroids for sport or like performance enhancing drugs, right? Might make you better for a few days, might make you better for a few months. It is always going to have costs later on. It's always going to create over-aliance. I saw this comment from somebody that said, "Creativity is a skill. It's not an innate talent." And that talent is not developed to the same degree when you rely on AI, and I completely agree. Being creative, thinking outside the box, generating ideas is difficult. That's half of why it's enjoyable because it challenges you and it gets you to execute something complex and interesting. And so when we have this easy technology that can do it for you, that can write the end of the script, that can generate the start of the poem, that can generate an image for a friend's birthday card. Of course, you're going to take it, especially in a world that values efficiency more than creativity, and it always has. However, every time we make that choice, we deny our brain's ability to tap into a specific kind of thinking called divergent thinking. This is a type of free-flowing, undirected, mysterious thinking that generates new ideas and new perspectives and new answers. Our ability for individual divergent thought is one of the most human things about us. And it's made up of four things. Fluency, the ability to develop a large number of ideas, flexibility, the ability to produce ideas in many categories, originality, the ability to think about something in a way that others couldn't and elaboration, the ability to take an abstract thought and make it into something real. So basically, have an idea, turn it into a piece of art. If you take our ability for divergent thinking away due to disuse or replacing some part of that divergent thinking process with a machine, you take away a big part of your humaneness. I read this wonderful, sub-stack article that said, "The most important thing creativity does for us is that it helps us know that I self." And you cannot know that I self if you ask AI to generate ideas for you, because you were relying on something beyond you that does not have a soul, does not have a spirit to do the sacred work of a human. It's treating creativity like something that needs to be efficient and productive and perfect and mass-produced, when that is the opposite of what it's intended to be. When everyone ends up making the same stuff, the reflection of personhood and individuality that creativity has meant to channel is destroyed. Essentially, over relying on AI is outsourcing your muse. Also, let's be real here. There's an ethical concern. AI had to learn how to be creative from somewhere, because it's not naturally creative, because it's not real. How to learn how to produce art and produce stories. Where do you think it learned that from? It was trained on the art and work of living people. Look up and Thropic AI settlement. Look up this settlement case if you want evidence that this is happening. This company, and I know about this because I'm an author, right? And I got an email about it. This company literally illegally pirated over 7 million books to train its bookwriting AI model. It's now been forced to pay over 1.5 billion dollars in a settlement suit. Imagine using AI for a creative project, only to realize you copied someone else's work you didn't get paid to send. I don't think that's a good feeling ethically. So to summarize, this is what we have come to. AI is costing our brains on a collective scale. Their ability to think critically, their intelligence, their ability to connect with others, their creativity, and our sense of humanity and well-being. Is that the end? Is that it? Like, is that just our destiny? So we just have to accept it? I don't think so. I don't think so. Otherwise, I wouldn't be making this this episode. I think we can have positive and have a positive vision for ourselves in the new AI world by practicing some discernment and continuing to use the skills we know could be overtaken by AI, but still feel good for us to practice and make us feel human. So just to quickly finish off this episode, I want to go through some ways to counter out the impact of AI on your brain and psychology. Number one, let thinking cause you friction. Friction is what builds skill the way to scum fit is what builds muscle. Don't think of friction as the cost of thinking or the side effect of thinking that needs to be eliminated. Think of it as the reward you get for thinking. Your brain benefits from problem-solving. It benefits from what we call productive confusion. Productive confusion is when something feels difficult in the moment, but strengthens your capacity in the future. There is this tremendous 2014 article by researchers at the University of Boulder, Colorado called literally the benefits of confusion for learning, which basically tested this theory. It tested this theory that things that are harder and contain contradictions and conflicts in multiple sources teach us more. And what they found was that that is true. Friction in learning promotes deeper understanding and intelligence. One way to practice that, the 30 minute rule before you commit to AI, before you say I'm going to AI this, chat, LGBT, this, from an ask chat, commit to 30 minutes of searching. Listen, AI will always be there, but this is about values. Do you value convenience or do you value deep learning and intelligence? Do you want to be someone who can only do things quickly or someone who can engage deeply independently? And it's honestly up to you. You have free will, but you just have to acknowledge the consequences of being AI dependent here. Secondly, question whether using AI is absolutely necessary in a specific circumstance. And question how much time it's actually going to save. I think we can all benefit from using AI less. So just be selective with what you use it for. I think small tasks like knowing the weather or replying to an email, you can probably do that yourself. In fact, it's probably a good thing if you do. A lot of AI researchers will tell you the best use of AI is not my new tasks. It's also not complex tasks. It's process tasks that reduce cognitive load, but still require human reasoning, abstraction and thoughts. So examples of this formatting, structuring, outlining, searching. When AI is used for microtasks, it risks learned helplessness. Basically, I can't do anything without this. When it's used for complex decisions or large amounts of thinking, it risks authority bias. You know, just it said this is the case. So it must be true. And it also causes us to lose a lot of originality. You know, I'm not stupid as much as I try and avoid AI in my own life. Because my values, I know a lot of us will use it. It's about using it consciously because you know, hopefully what the cost is, the water, the energy, the brain tax. And I think this brings us to our third tip, which is to limit how often you're allowed to use it per day. This is something my good friend Lizzie does. Obviously, she doesn't want to deny herself the efficiency benefits of AI, especially since she works in a, I was going to say where she works. She works not going to, she works in a corporate environment that is very demanding. And everyone is assisted by AI. But what she does is she limits herself to three searches a day because it's a priority for her to keep her creative and original thinking skills sharp. She uses it as a tool, which is what it should be used as just find the formula that works for you. Tip number four, notice when it's replacing human sources as well. Again, I'm not going to deny that AI is an amazing for some things. What it's definitely not amazing for is giving you personal advice, relationship advice, therapy, advice when it's telling you how to answer someone's text when it's telling you how to communicate with another person. That is not how we should be using AI. That is something that I think is sacred. Being able to solve problems between us, being able to communicate and be open and learn from each other. The moment that is replaced by a machine, like I just think all help is lost because empathy is then, empathy is then something that we are saying is so unimportant. It can be offloaded. Those are the tips I think we need to stay grounded in AI. Also, just let yourself be bored, let yourself be creative. Make sure that you are continuing to tap into what makes you feel human. I think that will just make us feel more positive. It will make us feel more positive about ourselves and about the fact that we are alive and sentient and human. It will allow us to keep building skills that people who only use AI won't have. I think that gives you an edge that it's going to become even more important in a very AI-centric world. Being creative, being a divergent thinker, thinking broadly, being a centric. That is going to be the next biggest skill in an AI world. If you've got those, I honestly feel positive for your future. I think you're going to be just fine. Thank you, as always, to our researcher, Libby Colbert for her help with this episode. Thank you if you have made it this far. If you have, and you are listening on Spotify, leave a little computer emoji down below, so I know you're a loyal listener. Thank you, as always, for being here until the end. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it didn't come off too strong. But also, I'm down for a discussion. So if you have further thoughts, do you get me, email me, how we want to get in touch? You can follow us on Instagram @thatpsychologypodcast. You can also follow us on Substack and TikTok. If you are listening and you want to watch the podcast, we are on Netflix. So you can tune in over there if you haven't yet. And if you're in the US and Canada. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, be AI conscious. We will talk very, very soon. Hi, it's Jill Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Christa Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns, the embodiment of Pisces Intuition with Capricorn Power Moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart, listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my god, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to "Birden of Guild" season 2 on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Nekkerd, in 2022. I was the lead of ABCs, the Bachelor. But here's the thing, Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to "Love Trap" on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ago Woda is your host for the 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards live at South by Southwest. Are we supposed to talk about your dad? Her podcast "Think's Dad" is full of funny heartfelt conversations with actors including fellow SNL alums, comedians, musicians, and more about life and their wonderfully complicated relationships with their fathers. I think and hope that's a good thing. Get to know Ago. Follow "Think's Dad" with Ago Woda and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.