AI Is Making You Dumber (study)

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Careers, Business, Marketing

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Neil and Eric tackle whether AI is making us dumber and what that means for the next generation of marketers. They discuss falling literacy and math scores, why kids need strong critical thinking before using AI, and how agentic workflows change marketing team structures. You’ll hear practical insights on balancing AI and human creativity, plus why real traction and case studies still win clients in an AI-driven world. Timestamps (00:00) Is AI making us dumber? (01:00) Reading and math scores in decline (03:00) Building intelligence before using AI (07:00) Agentic workflows and marketing headcount (10:00) Real-world ROI: case studies, tools, and team balance 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you know that AI is making us dumber?
0:02.0	Yeah, there's been a lot of studies on this.
0:04.0	It makes people think less. I think Harvard or one of those colleges released something on this a few months ago. For the sake of this clip, he doesn't know. So this guy, I don't know if I showed you this one, but this is from Derek Thompson. So it's a new newsletter. It's called The End of Thinking. thinking. So doomsday predictions about AI taking our jobs in the future, shift focus away from
0:24.6	where it belongs.
0:25.6	In present reality, the age of screen tech has coincided with declines in literacy, reading,
0:30.4	and writing.
0:31.4	We are deskilling ourselves.
0:32.4	So if you look at this over here, you can see that adult, the numeracy and the literacy
0:37.4	is just going straight down,
0:38.4	like numeracy, right?
0:39.3	That math and the literacy has gone down quite a bit here as well.
0:43.3	And you look at teenagers, it's gone off a cliff, right?
0:46.3	Science has gone down, reading, maths has gone down quite a bit.
0:50.3	And these are average scores and assessments across different domains in high income countries. Teen and adult scores used different scales.
0:56.0	So it went from like 510 up here for math all the way down to now it's down to like 480 or so.
1:02.0	That's crazy.
1:04.0	But what's interesting with keep going.
1:07.0	Change in 12th grade NAEP math score.
1:10.0	So 2005,
1:11.8	2013 versus 2013, 2024, you can see that in the black line,
1:17.0	lower performing students are getting even worse.
1:19.4	This is a change in 12th grade math scores, right?
	...

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