Sridhar warns AI reliance is eroding student brain fitness

In a 2026 Higher Education Policy Institute survey, 95% of undergraduates said they used AI in some capacity, and 94% said they had used it in assessed work.

Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, uses that number to open her Guardian column drawing an analogy between physical inactivity and cognitive outsourcing. 'Just as resistance training is important to maintain muscle mass as we age, our brains also need regular exercise to keep sharp,' she writes.

Her main piece of evidence is an MIT study titled 'Your Brain on ChatGPT', which used EEG to compare students writing essays with and without generative AI. Those using the chatbots showed 'weaker and less distributed brain connectivity than those writing fully on their own'. She sets that alongside an OECD report finding student performance across member countries at 'the lowest average ever recorded for maths and reading', and a study of more than 19,000 adults over 50 linking crosswords, sudoku and similar 'cognitively stimulating leisure activities' to lower dementia risk. Two researchers we follow shared her column into our tracker.

The piece is opinion, not causal evidence: Sridhar is stitching separate studies into a warning about what universally embedded AI might do to a cohort of students, and she frames it as a question rather than a finding.

Her sharper line is the political one. 'We must not entrust tech companies with our long-term health,' she writes.