Research finds AI users scarily willing to "surrender" their cognition to LLMs
Experiments show large majorities uncritically accepting "faulty" AI answers.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

@arstechnica

If you are asking AI to do something you don't already understand you are using the tool wrong imo.

@arstechnica I think this is not about AI in general, but people not wanting to spend energy to figure things out.
That has always been the case.

@arstechnica pretty much how humans respond to anything.

1950-2020: "He has a PhD in …"
0-1950: "He's a spiritual leader of …"

@arstechnica
I actively avoid AI and have it switched off on all my devices and on my Firefox browser.

@arstechnica
"... large majorities uncritically accepting "faulty" AI answers...."

Because of course they fucking are.
🙈 🙉 🙊
"And the worst possible thing we could know — worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms — is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people."
-Thomas Ligotti

@arstechnica The fact is that curated frozen human intelligence of the advanced autocomplete variety does seem to already be slightly better at reasoning than many humans, so can you blame them?
@arstechnica
all the shitty students get to vote, too

@arstechnica The scariest thing about AI for me is how it wants... needs to track, learn, record, BE your digital self... making moves on your behalf with or without you knowing...

and you can't even hold it accountable because it's not a real person. It's just really over reaching software.

I don't like the idea of it at all.

@arstechnica This is partly why i hate AI its being pushed as this bigger than life solution for all humankinds problems when it clearly mostly just causes them!

But people who dont know anything about tech believe the marketing sadly. 

@arstechnica yes, but that group being surveyed are "AI users" so they've long ago surrendered their intelligence. This is the end result of that culture. Dont include the rest of us - do the per capita.