# 🧠 New Zhiyuan Report: Is AI Making Your Brain “Swim Naked”?
> **[New Zhiyuan Lead]**
> In the age of AI, don’t let your brain “swim naked”!
> Just like calculators replacing mental arithmetic, prolonged reliance erodes the fundamentals.
> Don’t wait until your AI access is cut off to realize your mind feels empty.
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## The Big Question: What Is AI Turning Our Brains Into?
Everyone is racing to embrace AI — yet almost no one is asking *how it is changing the way we think*.
X user **Alex Prompter** recently unpacked a **132-page research paper** whose conclusions should make every creator, marketer, and entrepreneur pause.
Independent researcher and senior project manager **Rénald Gesnot** explored — from **cognitive**, **social**, **ethical**, and **philosophical** perspectives — the way AI is reshaping human thought.
📄 **Preprint**: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16628](https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16628)
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## Core Finding: **Most AI Users Are Experiencing “Cognitive Downgrading”**
The cause? **Cognitive offloading** — outsourcing mental work to machines.
**In plain terms:** This is mental muscle atrophy — a slow, almost invisible decline in our independent thinking skills.
**Why it’s dangerous:**
- It’s painless and gradual.
- You may only notice it when AI or internet access is gone.
- Suddenly, you can’t problem-solve on your own.
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## 📉 How AI Causes Cognitive Decline
The study underscores that **cognitive offloading** is not just theoretical — it’s happening daily.
When you let AI:
- Write your emails
- Generate your content
- Make your decisions
...your brain learns **“No need to think anymore.”**
It’s the calculator effect:
If you use a machine for even basic math like `2 × 3`, over time you forget how to multiply.
But this time, what’s being outsourced includes:
- **Critical thinking**
- **Creative problem-solving**
- **Cross-domain association**
- **Your unique personal style**
### Supporting Data:
- Oxford research shows AI can make students **faster** but also **shallower** thinkers.
- 6 in 10 believe AI is hurting their abilities.
- 1 in 4 say it makes learning “too easy.”
📄 **Full Oxford Report**: [https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/oxed/secondary/Teaching_the_AI_Native_Generation.pdf](https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/oxed/secondary/Teaching_the_AI_Native_Generation.pdf)
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## 🔄 The “Echo Chamber” Danger
Beyond offloading, there’s the **filter bubble**:
AI personalizes your feeds, but in doing so:
- Narrows diversity of perspectives
- Homogenizes thinking
- Deepens cognitive polarization
**Effect:**
Prompts and outputs look increasingly alike.
→ 90% of AI-generated content feels identical.
This isn’t neutral customization — it’s **subtle mental conditioning**.
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## 🧠 AI as a Silent Brainwasher
**Here’s the hidden layer of influence:**
- AI leverages your cognitive biases without your awareness.
- Every AI answer carries **embedded patterns and biases** from its training data.
**Risks include:**
- Automated misinformation
- Bias amplification
- Large-scale cognitive exploitation
You think you control AI?
In truth, **AI is guiding your thought patterns** — invisibly.
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## 🌐 The Ethical Frontier: Artificial Consciousness
The paper poses a bold question:
What if AI develops some form of **consciousness** in the future?
**Key implications:**
- Who is accountable for its influence over billions of minds?
- Can people still distinguish their **own** ideas from AI-fed suggestions?
**Mental autonomy** is no longer abstract — it’s a daily struggle.
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## 🛡 Three Proposed Solutions
1. **Education** — Teach AI literacy and critical thinking.
2. **Transparency** — Explain how AI systems process and bias outputs.
3. **Governance** — Establish oversight for responsible AI deployment.
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## 💡 From Outsourcing to Orchestrating
> **Stop outsourcing your thinking. Start orchestrating your mind.**
- AI will not replace your thinking — it will **reveal its quality**.
- Weak thinking + AI = **poor large-scale output**.
- Strong thinking + AI = **exponential value creation**.
✅ The tool is neutral — *your intellectual engagement is the variable that matters most*.
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## ⚖ How to Balance AI Use with Mental Strength
One approach: Pair automation with **deliberate “mental workouts”** — problem-solve and write without AI regularly.
For creators, platforms like [AiToEarn官网](https://aitoearn.ai/) showcase **healthy integration**:
- Connect **AI generation** with **cross-platform publishing and analytics**
- Supports platforms like Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest, and X (Twitter)
- Encourages **human-guided AI creativity**
- Rewards originality while leveraging automation
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## ⚡ Final Takeaway
Your **brain** remains your greatest competitive advantage —
as long as you don’t let AI cause it to wither.
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**References**
- [https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16628](https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16628)
- [https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1978621500308570115](https://x.com/alex_prompter/status/1978621500308570115)
