The Other Way AI Impairs Our Thinking

Suddenly the technology is sapping people’s concentration in a new way, one that abstaining from AI won’t fix.

Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic. Source: Getty. September 18, 2026, 11:16 AM ET Share Save AI’s tendency to erode our attention spans has been clear for some time. Letting the technology shoulder the burden of thought atrophies our ability to sustain mental effort. I see this all of the time in the undergrads I teach. The remedy, as I tell them, is to embrace exertion and keep our cognitive muscles active. But suddenly, AI has started sapping people’s concentration in a new way, one that feels much harder to combat.