Yet Another Study Shows That AI Use Makes You Less Knowledgeable

Using AI to access knowledge is leading us to develop shallower subject knowledge than using traditional internet search, according to new research. The study examined how well participants understand a subject when researched via both AI and traditional search.

The study revealed that people who learned about a topic through an LLM felt that they learned less, and when asked to rewrite what they had learned for a new audience, invested less effort in doing so and ultimately wrote advice that was less factual, more generic, and not as detailed.

With individuals and businesses turning to AI in droves, we should be mindful of the potential repercussions of blindly adopting this technology. By poorly deploying LLMs, for instance, companies run the risk of accruing AI debt, which can have severe financial and reputational impacts.

AI Making Us Less Knowledgeable

AI tools, including ChatGPT and Gemini, are making us less knowledgeable, according to new research. Co-authored by Shiri Melumad and Jin Ho Yun — both professors of marketing — the study found that relying on LLMs to gather information leads to inferior knowledge retention when compared with using traditional internet search.

The study set out to compare how people retain and recreate knowledge that they access from AI and internet search. Participants were asked to learn about a topic, such as “how to grow a vegetable garden,” and were randomly assigned either an AI chatbot or “the old-fashioned way,” navigating links through a standard Google search.

The researchers didn’t place any restrictions on how participants used their respective tools, meaning that they could use Google for as long as they wanted or issue as many follow-up prompts on their LLM as they saw fit.

Study Unequivocally Points to Inferiority of AI Knowledge Search

Participants were then asked to write advice for a friend on the subject that they’d just learned about. The results showed that the group who had used an LLM felt that they had learned less, and subsequently invested less effort in writing their advice, which was consistently shorter, less factual, and more generic.

Both sets of advice were presented to an independent sample of readers, who were unaware of which had come from internet search versus AI use. They found the advice that came from AI search was less helpful, less informative, and they were less likely to adopt it.

In an effort to control as many variables as possible, another experiment was run in which participants were exposed to the same set of facts, regardless of whether they came from Google search or ChatGPT. The researchers theorized that AI users were potentially exposed to a less eclectic range of information, owing to the way that LLMs scrape information. The results still indicated that AI search led to a shallower retention and recreation of knowledge.

Results Have Important Implications for Business Sector

The study adds to a growing pile of evidence that not only is AI making us less intellectually curious, but that misusing it can have devastating consequences.

In the business world, this is known as “AI debt,” and it refers to the costs that are incurred when a company uses AI technology to produce output without first pausing to consider how to deploy it effectively. The consequences can be severe, with AI debt linked to financial, reputational, and morale-based damage.

As 2025 draws to a close, AI continues to surge in popularity, with both individuals and businesses looking to the technology to access information, automate workflows, and create inspiration. But the above findings should serve as a note of caution for interested parties.