This article was probably written by AI, because anyone with half a brain could not read the study and come to the same conclusions.

Basically, participants spent less than half an hour, 4 times, over 4 months, writing some bullcrap SAT type essay. Some participants used AI.

So to accept the premise of the article, using an AI tool once a month for 20 minutes caused noticeable brain rot. It is silly on its face.

What the study actually showed, people don't have an investment or strong memory to output they didn't produce. Again, this is a BS essay written (mostly by undergrads) in 20 minutes, so not likely to be deep in any capacity. So to extrapolate, if you have a task that requires you to understand the output, you are less likely to have a grasp of it if you didn't help produce the output. This would also be true of work some other person did.