Is AI making our brains lazier?
All In The Mind
ABC Australia
4.5 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Social media gave us brain rot; will AI give us cognitive atrophy? How can we possibly learn to cope with the sheer amount of uncertainty and change heading our way?
Cognitive neuroscientist Joel Pearson is back on the show, two years after his mega popular appearance in our episode titled "Scarier than killer robots": why your mind isn't ready for AI.In this episode we cover the potential long-term impact of widescale job losses, the anxiety university students are feeling about their job prospects, the risk of cognitive atrophy when outsourcing to AI, and what we can do to be more adaptable and flexible in the age of AI.
You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
Guest:
Professor Joel PearsonPsychologist, neuroscientistFounder and Director, Future Minds LabUniversity of New South Wales
Credits:
- Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar
- Senior producer: James Bullen
- Producer: Rose Kerr
- Sound engineer: Tim Jenkins
More info:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music and more. |
| 0:07.5 | It's one of Australia's most baffling, unsolved missing persons cases. |
| 0:13.0 | In 2007, four people, including a five-year-old girl, vanished in Western Australia, |
| 0:19.8 | amid rumours of bizarre behaviour, cults and long |
| 0:23.3 | hidden secrets. Yep, yep, because we're trying to trap them down. I'm Dominique Bayans, |
| 0:28.1 | and I've been investigating for the new season of Expans, the Nan Up 4. Search Expanse on ABC |
| 0:34.9 | Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:46.4 | The pace at which developments in AI are happening is dizzying. Overwhelming. I mean, at the start of 2023, we were here. Chat GPT. Maybe you've heard of it. If you haven't, |
| 0:53.1 | then get ready. GPT is a type of artificial intelligence model developed by Open AI. |
| 0:59.0 | So quaint and innocent. |
| 1:01.0 | Three years later, we are here. |
| 1:04.0 | Stark warning about artificial intelligence from Jeffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize winning scientist. |
| 1:08.0 | Hinton says there's a 10 to 20% chance AI will wipe out humans. |
| 1:12.6 | Researchers have been sounding the alarm bell as they walk out to major companies. |
| 1:16.6 | A slew of high-profile employees have quit open-E-eye, anthropic and X-AI. |
| 1:20.6 | That is quite the escalation. |
| 1:22.6 | And along the way, a lot of other stuff has happened as well, |
| 1:25.6 | from the peculiar to the deeply |
| 1:28.4 | concerning. |
| 1:29.4 | Although maybe it's all deeply concerning depending on where you stand. |
| 1:33.0 | In Japan, one woman tied the knot with her AI-generated boyfriend. |
| 1:37.5 | There's a number of reports about people developing distorted thoughts or delusional beliefs |
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