2025 in Review: Is ChatGPT hurting our critical thinking skills?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re looking back at 10 of the episodes that defined 2025 at The Take. This originally aired on July 3. None of the dates or references have been changed.
Are AI chatbots dulling our brains? A new MIT study suggests critical thinking skills are at risk from tools like ChatGPT. What does scientific research say about what happens to brains that rely on artificial intelligence? And how can you use AI tools while protecting your ability to think for yourself?
In this episode:
- Celia Ford (@cogcelia), Science Journalist and Neuroscientist
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, Sonia Bhagat and Tamara Khandaker, with Marcos Bartolomé, Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Melanie Marich, Kisaa Zehra, Remas Alhawari, and our guest host, Manuel Rapalo. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:10.3 | Hey everyone, Malika here. |
| 0:12.2 | We're bringing you our second week of the takes year in review. |
| 0:15.4 | Ten episodes looking at the stories that shape 2025. |
| 0:18.9 | We're starting off this week, revisiting the question, is chat GPT hurting our |
| 0:24.1 | critical thinking? Don't let the chat bot hear you. This episode first aired on July 3rd, 2025. All dates |
| 0:31.9 | and references are from that time. Enjoy the show and let us know what you think in the comments. |
| 0:48.5 | Today, AI makes life easy, but is it breaking our brains? |
| 0:53.7 | When we let large language models write essays or code for us, |
| 0:56.9 | we're giving up something that feels, at least to me, |
| 1:04.0 | pretty central to humanness. How real are concerns that AI chatbots diminish our ability to learn? And what can you do about it? I'm Manuel Rapalo, and this is The Take. |
| 1:17.1 | My name is Celia Ford. |
| 1:19.0 | I am a science writer and ex-neuroscientist, and I'm based in Oakland, California. |
| 1:25.2 | Celia, there's all these headlines, professors, teachers, people complaining about |
| 1:29.4 | chat GPT and other large |
| 1:31.5 | language models or LLMs |
| 1:33.5 | saying that they are |
| 1:35.6 | making people lazy, |
| 1:38.3 | maybe stopping our ability to think critically, |
| 1:40.8 | how much truth is there to this? |
| 1:42.8 | I think that there's a concerning amount of truth to this. |
| 1:49.6 | Yeah, I don't necessarily think that all AI tools necessarily make you totally lazy and rot your brain, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Al Jazeera, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Al Jazeera and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.