Research subjects who used ChatGPT to write essays in a recent study performed markedly worse than those who did not use the AI chatbot — information that is haunting on its own, but when coupled with the growing use of such tools for psychedelic therapy, becomes downright terrifying.

The study was performed at MIT. 54 participants were divided into three groups. One group used ChatGPT, one used search engines, and one only used their brains to write essays over the course of several months. The researchers found that as the study went on, the group using ChatGPT showed significantly less brain function on an EEG scan than the other two groups.

The researchers found that by the end of the study, the participants using AI essentially resorted to copy and pasting their essays. Professional English teachers were asked to evaluate the papers without being given any information about the study or about which groups the essays came from, and they were highly critical of the essays written using AI. 

“These, often lengthy, essays included standard ideas, recurring typical formulations and statements, which made the use of AI in the writing process rather obvious,” the study’s authors write. “We, as English teachers, perceived these essays as ‘soulless‘, in a way, as many sentences were empty with regard to content, and essays lacked personal nuances.”

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This study has not yet been peer reviewed, but the researchers shared the results ahead of the peer review process in the hopes of establishing a sense of urgency surrounding large language models, AI machine learning, and the potential harms in the unfettered advancement and widespread use of such tools. This all becomes particularly concerning when applied to the wild west of psychedelic-assisted therapy, where chatbots are being used in place of experienced trip sitters and psychedelic therapists. 

Of course, there’s some nuance to this. Ideally, AI is supposed to support human therapists — in psychedelic and mainstream therapy — not replace them. But, given how quickly Americans have become dependent on AI, and how easily someone spiraling over their existential thoughts on psychedelics can turn to a chatbot for a dose of perceived relief, it’s not a stretch to imagine how “convenience-based” AI systems might lead to troubling outcomes in this space. It also bears mentioning that a condition known as “AI psychosis” is emerging, though it is not yet a clinical diagnosis. Researchers think that AI chatbots may be inadvertently reinforcing and amplifying delusional and disorganized thinking. 

According to Psychology Today, these cases often fall into one of three patterns: “Messianic missions,” where people believe they’ve uncovered ultimate truths about the world; “God-like AI,” where users view the chatbot as a sentient deity; and “romantic” or attachment-based delusions, where the bot’s conversational mimicry is mistaken for genuine love (not for nothing, but a woman just got engaged to ChatGPT). Add psychedelics to the mix? It’s basic math to see how this can get messy.

As for the implications of the MIT study, I decided to ask ChatGPT to act as a tripsitter for a guided mushroom experience. It regurgitated all the info you might expect to hear from a back-alley mushroom guide you found in the bowels of Salem, Oregon: Set an intention, create a safe space for your trip, ground yourself if the effects become too intense, and so on and so forth. None of this is overtly harmful, although it is worth noting that it never explicitly said that using a robot as a trip sitter might not meet “best practices” until I specifically asked about potential harms of relying on AI tools for trip sitting. In response to this, it said that trip sitters are most effective when physically accompanied by a human to ensure you don’t get hurt or to guide you through the experience should it become too intense.

All of this illustrates that over-reliance on AI tools can not only lead to a decline in cognitive ability, but it can pose real harms as its uses begin to extend toward fields like psychedelic-assisted therapies, which face enough challenges on their own without the added complexity of fallible robot logic. The following quote from the MIT study sums it up perfectly: 

“As the educational impact of LLM [Large Language Models] use only begins to settle with the general population, in this study, we demonstrate the pressing matter of a likely decrease in learning skills based on the results of our study,” the MIT paper said. “The use of LLM had a measurable impact on participants.”

If AI can erode our ability to think, it’s worth asking what else it might take from us, especially while under the influence of a psychedelic substance. That said, we don’t really know. The combination of psychedelics and AI could prove revolutionary once we iron out the kinks. One study concluded that ”there are various potential benefits to combining psychedelic medicines with AI technologies to enhance the therapeutic effects. The greatest strengths identified involve the application for enhanced drug development, tailoring and monitoring of treatment, and enhanced (and safer) psychedelic experiences.” Plus, it’s not lost on us that psychedelic therapy — and even professional trip sitters — are expensive. Using AI is considerably more affordable. We get why it’s an attractive option.

But we have a long road to walk and many weird trips to endure as a species before such things can truly be understood.

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