A study published on Apr 6, 2026 shows that using ai agents can negatively impact problem-solving skills and mental stamina.
The study by a multi university research team from the Universities of Oxford, MIT, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon clearly shows negative impact on using ai agents.
The study is a large-scale, randomized controlled experiment (N = 354) on fraction-solving tasks. More details can be found here.
In a nutshell, the researchers conclude:
In a series of large-scale human experiments, involving arithmetic and reading comprehension, we find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost: after just ∼10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it. These findings raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning. We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained AI use, current AI systems — optimized only for short-term helpfulness — risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.
So... AI is going great, today!