AI Use Appears to Have a “Boiling Frog” Effect on Human Cognition, New Study Warns

A new study claims to offer the first causal link between AI dependency and cognitive erosion. Researchers warn of long-term implications.

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Andrew Lewin (@andrewlewinmp)

This essay was first published by the Fabian society as part of a collection of Labour Thinks Essays, I would encourage you to read the full collection at the link below. This is my contribution. https://fabians.org.uk/publication/common-endeavour/ Brexit Has Failed Brexit has failed on its own terms. It has left our economy weaker, limited our ability to deal with irregular migration, and reduced our influence in the world. It is a decision that looks far different in 2026 than was promised in 2016. Back then, Barack Obama was still in the White House, and war in Europe was as unthinkable as a US president threatening to seize Greenland by force. In the intervening years, the world has changed – and the promises made to people who voted Leave have been systematically broken. A comprehensive UK/US free trade deal was supposed to be the “easiest trade deal in history” according to Liam Fox, the post-Brexit trade secretary. It never materialised. The EU remains our largest trading partner, but after leaving the customs union and single market, the cost to do business with our closest neighbours has risen dramatically. The added regulatory and financial burden has resulted in 16,000 UK businesses stopping exports to the EU entirely. The hit to UK GDP is estimated to be at least £40bn; some economists put it higher still. Small boats carrying people seeking asylum didn’t land on UK shores when we were an EU member state. Had they done so, they would very likely not have ended up living in British hotels. Instead, they would have been legally retuned to the first EU country in which they arrived under the Dublin III regulation. We left the Dublin regulation in December 2020. By 2022, the small boats crisis was a pre-eminent issue in UK politics. The failure of Brexit was crushingly predictable, but it is not the job of Labour politicians to lament what we have lost. Rather, it is our responsibility to have a vision for a future UK/EU relationship, make a consistent political argument for it, and be clear eyed on how we can work with our allies in Europe to deliver on it. A new debate for a new time In 2016, we were in the foothills of the populist wave. Ten years later, few people could have imagined that the United States would be introducing blanket tariffs on its allies. Fewer still would have considered it possible that Ukraine would be in the fourth year of an existential fight for survival against Vladimir Putin, in which hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and the frontline moves at a speed that historians of the first world war would recognise. Our central argument for a closer and stronger relationship with the EU cannot simply be that 2016 was a mistake. It must reflect the world as it is today. This starts from the conviction that in a changed and undoubtedly more dangerous world, the case for the UK rebuilding closer economic and security ties with our nearest neighbours has never been more compelling. The other essential foundation is a good and improving relationship with our friends in the EU27, one that rebuilds trust lost during the Brexit years and a common view that a deeper partnership is desirable, achievable, and in our mutual interest. The Labour government and a UK/EU reset We are headed in the right direction. Our government was elected less than two years ago, but relations between Brussels and London have dramatically improved. Rachel Reeves was the first chancellor to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers since we left the EU, and the prime minister hosted Ursula Von der Leyen for the first annual summit in May last year. The summit was more than just a symbolic moment – the common understanding signed was the first concrete move towards closer partnership in more than a decade. The Erasmus+ deal is already signed, creating opportunities for up to 100,000 young Brits to live and learn in the EU from 2027. Students and apprentices will benefit, and there is a welcome focus in the Cabinet Office on ensuring that the opportunities extend to people from all backgrounds. Negotiations on a wider UK/EU youth mobility scheme are happening as I write this piece, and our government should feel emboldened. There is consistent majority support from the public for a youth mobility deal. People recognise that young Europeans come to the UK to work, contribute, and deepen cultural connections. They know that another generation of young Brits should not miss out on opportunities to live in the EU that were open to their parents. Moreover, with net migration falling sharply in 2025 to 204,000, and continuing to trend lower, the UK can have an ambitious youth mobility deal and deliver on our manifesto promise to cut overall migration from 2024 levels. The common understanding also includes the joint ambition to agree a new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement, UK participation in the EU’s internal electricity market, and a plan to link our respective emission trading schemes. These would all be substantive steps forward and would cut costs for both businesses and consumers. It is hard to overstate the importance of the current negotiations. I have spent time in Brussels and with to EU representatives based in London, and a phrase I have heard repeatedly to describe the Brexit negotiations from the EU’s perspective is ‘scarring’. The Conservatives’ approach did serious damage to our economy and our credibility. For the EU to entertain a further and more ambitious deal with the UK, we must first make sure we turn the common understanding into a robust agreement. A Swiss-style deal? The chancellor said in early 2026 that stronger trade ties with the European bloc are “the biggest prize” for Britain. Despite the barriers erected by the Brexit deal, the EU accounts for 42 per cent of UK exports and 52 per cent of imports. The greater our participation in the single market, the greater the economic benefit to the UK. The Swiss have a complex but unique arrangement with the EU. The Swiss rejected EEA membership in 1992 and their relationship has evolved through bilateral treaties. Switzerland voluntarily adopts parts of EU law and integrates into the EU’s single market, but not as full members. The common food safety area set out in the Swiss deal is a good precedent for our negotiations for an SPS deal. Similarly, the Swiss-EU agreement on electricity also provides a framework for our own approach to electricity trading. They also have a deal on mutual recognition of conformity assessments – currently outside of the scope of UK/EU negotiations, but crucial for removing technical barriers to trade in the future. Given that the UK economy is driven by services, which comprise almost 80 per cent of our GDP , any option that increases our access to the single market has to be taken seriously. One of the great ironies of the Brexit saga is that the EU single market was driven forward by a Conservative government in the 1980s because they recognised how much we stood to gain. While taking a Swiss model seriously, we can’t ignore the trade-offs. It would certainly involve UK financial contributions to the single market and a renewed debate about freedom of movement. Freedom of movement exists between the EU and Switzerland, although Switzerland has negotiated an ‘emergency brake’, that can be pulled if numbers are judged by their government to be the cause of, “economic or social damage.” The E6: New leadership and new possibilities? Switzerland is not the only country with a bespoke arrangement. In 2025, six EU member states formed the E6. Together, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands comprise 70 per cent of the EU’s population. They decided to establish a new forum that could move faster than the EU27 on a shared agenda. The E6 has four stated priorities: deepening European capital markets, expanding the international role of the euro, tightening coordination in defence procurement, and ensuring the resilience of European supply chains. This is a reaction to a different world, where a pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and anxiety over global supply chains is driving reappraisal in the EU about how best to work together. The emergence of the E6 leads me to believe that pro-Europeans in the Labour party need not limit our ambition to a Swiss deal, a customs partnership, or any pre-existing agreement. The global shifts we are living through are as great as any since the fall of the Berlin wall, and with such change, the mutual interests of the EU and the UK are changing too. In 2006, leaving the EU was a fringe idea in UK politics. A decade later, it was a sad reality. In 2026, the world order has changed, and the stakes are higher than ever. Bound together by geography, history, and shared values, the UK-EU relationship is as essential to our security and prosperity today as it has been in decades. It falls on this generation of Labour MPs, and this Labour government, to rebuild our alliances in Europe and to reimagine what is possible. The world is changing at pace and so is our continent. We cannot fear the shadow of the 2016 referendum, we need to make the case for a renewed and stronger relationship with the EU and to do it with urgency and conviction.