Turning to AI to complete tasks may be eroding people's ability to make an effort to think for themselves and makes them more likely to give up, new research has found.This could leave us in a "boiling frog" scenario, in which the capabilities of our brains are progressively compromised as we lean on AI more heavily, the study warns.An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford, MIT, UCLA and Carnegie Mellon said their research provides evidence for two alarming consequences of using AI to help complete tasks: "Reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance.”The researchers asked people to carry out a variety of different tasks, including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension.Trapped in a downwards spiral? AI use has been shown to reduce people's ability to persist when completing tasks alone (Getty Images)They found that "after just 10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it”.Describing the gains seen from using AIs as coming "at a heavy cognitive cost", the team warned their findings "raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning". They said: "These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning."We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained AI use, current AI systems – optimised only for short-term helpfulness – risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support."While the effects may seem small in relation to society now, the team suggested a cumulative effect over years could lead to serious implications – undermining our own ability to concentrate and learn."The tasks investigated here, such as fraction arithmetic and reading comprehension, may seem delegable to tools like calculators, but conceptual mastery of these skills is a developmental prerequisite. Without these skills, higher-order competencies like algebra or critical reasoning remain inaccessible," they said.If AI erodes the motivation and persistence required to drive long-term learning, the effects "will accumulate over years, and by the time they are visible, they will be difficult to reverse". "This is analogous to the ‘boiling frog’ effect, where each incremental act feels costless, until the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming to address," they said.The "boiling frog" scenario is a cautionary metaphor in which frogs exposed to boiling water rapidly jump out, while frogs placed in cool water and then slowly heated fail to perceive the danger they are in, until they are boiled alive.Co-author of the research, Grace Liu, from Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department, told The Independent that the study indicates more research about human interaction with AIs is needed.She said: "The concern is about what cognitive scientists call 'desirable difficulties' – the productive struggle that builds skill over time. If AI routinely removes that struggle, people may get the right answer in the moment, but develop less robust independent capability. "It's not about AI making us 'dumber' – it's more subtle than that. But how significant this effect is at scale, and across different contexts, needs more research."She said people should not be "catastrophically" concerned about the findings, but that it should be regarded as "a signal that we should be more intentional about how and when AI assistance is deployed – particularly in learning contexts”.She added: "It's not a reason to avoid AI, but it is a reason to design and use these tools carefully."