Can AI Increase Dementia Risk? What Every Caregiver Needs to Know

Careblazer, most of us have heard about the foods, exercise and puzzles that can help protect our brain from dementia. But for the first time in history, we’re facing something totally new, something our parents and grandparents never had to think about.

Artificial intelligence. AI. And it could affect our brain health for better or for worse.

So can AI increase dementia risk? Researchers at MIT recently set out to see whether AI is actually hurting our brain, and what they found is worth knowing before you decide how you use it.

I honestly thought this was a topic most of you wouldn’t be interested in. I wondered how many of you actually use AI. Then I started talking about this study with members in one of our Care Collective support rooms, and I was surprised by how many of you are using it. That’s what made me decide to share it.

Why Dementia Prevention Matters Now

The biggest risk factor for dementia is age. The older you are, the higher your chances of developing it. About one in three people age 85 and older has Alzheimer’s dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

This isn’t to scare you. It’s to drive home how important it is to do whatever we can to protect our brains now.

The changes that happen in dementia begin in the brain long before symptoms show up, often 20 years or more. So whatever you are doing today is going to make an impact on your brain, and on the symptoms you may or may not have, 10 or 20 years from now.

And many of the Careblazers I talk to are worried about their own brain health.

“Will I get it?”

“Am I next?”

“Dementia runs in my family. Am I guaranteed to develop this?”

If that’s a fear you carry, I’ve talked about what a major study found about lifetime dementia risk and 14 changes that can lower it.

One of the things that protects our brain from dementia is lifelong learning. When we challenge our brain by learning new things, it creates new connections.

It’s like adding more roads and bridges to a city. Instead of having just one main road to a destination, you have all these other roads that get you there too. So if one road is shut down, traffic still flows. You can still reach where you’re going.

Your brain works the same way. If something is happening to one pathway, the new pathways you’ve built through lifelong learning let your brain compensate. It can still make adjustments and do what you want it to do.

What the Research Shows About AI and the Brain

The MIT researchers looked at an AI tool called ChatGPT. They wanted to know what happens to people’s brains when they use AI, compared to a regular Google search, compared to no outside help at all.

So they divided people into three groups, had them write essays, and measured their brain waves with an EEG. An EEG shows how active and connected your brain is while you’re thinking. You can think of it like the EKG that measures your heart rhythm, only for your brain.

Here’s what they found:

• No outside help (their own brain only): the highest brain activity.
• Google search: the middle ground.
• AI (ChatGPT): the least brain activity while writing the essays.

Not only that. The people who wrote their essays without AI had better memory of what they wrote, and felt more ownership of their work. The people who used ChatGPT often couldn’t accurately quote what they had just written.

It was a small study of 54 people, and it measured brain activity while writing, not dementia itself.

Think about it like exercise. If you always took the elevator instead of the stairs, your legs would eventually weaken. In the same way, outsourcing our thinking to AI gives our brain fewer workouts.

It’s almost like hiring somebody to do your workouts for you. You don’t get the benefit of lifting the weight.

Why This Matters for Dementia Prevention

Every time we learn, solve problems, or stretch our mind, our brain is creating those new pathways.

As we age and start to lose neurons, especially if dementia is starting to develop, some of those roads get damaged. But if we’ve built enough backup roads, our brain can keep finding detours.

If we let AI do too much of our heavy lifting, we miss out on building those protective connections.

How Caregivers Can Use AI Without Weakening Their Brain

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI. I personally use it for many different things. It just means being careful about how you use it.

Start With Your Own Ideas First

Say you’re using AI to help you write something, like the people in this study. Start with your own ideas first. Write out your own thoughts, put a few paragraphs together, and then ask AI to help polish it, expand it, critique it, or give you pros and cons.

That way you still have to use your brain to pull it all together.

If you’ve never used AI and you’re curious what you could use it for, here are a few caregiver-friendly ideas that won’t lead to “brain rot,” as some people call it.

Brainstorm Activities for Your Loved One

Use AI to brainstorm activities you could do with your loved one, then adapt one that works for the two of you.

You might tell it, “My loved one has difficulty with walking and balance, but he likes to move and be engaged in activity. What activities can you come up with?”

Think of it as a creative jumping-off point.

Learn a Medical Term You Don’t Understand

Maybe you’re learning a new medical term or a new area of the brain. Maybe the doctor gave you a summary, or you have notes printed out from your loved one’s medical records, and there’s a word in there you don’t know.

Put it into AI and have it teach you. Then try to summarize it back in your own words to make sure you understood.

That’s using AI in a way that’s good for your brain.

Plan Easy Meals for the Week

For a super quick tip that won’t necessarily build new pathways, but won’t hurt them either, use AI to come up with easy crockpot recipes for the week that save you time.

I recently had a house full of seven people, and I certainly turned to AI to help me find crowd-pleasing meals that would leave leftovers and didn’t require me to stand in front of the stove the whole time. That was actually quite helpful. I made two new recipes I’d never made before, and they were a big hit.

Will AI Lead to More Dementia?

I think one of the things the authors are cautioning against is that we’re releasing so much technology so quickly, and we don’t fully understand all of its consequences or side effects. So they’re asking us to be aware of what we’re using.

Bottom line: do not outsource your critical thinking to a machine. That critical thinking is helping lower your risk of dementia in the future.

Which leaves the real question. Will AI increase dementia in the future, if too many people rely on it too much for the deep thinking work?

Your brain health matters just as much as your loved one’s. Keep learning, keep stretching, and use tools that make your life easier in a way that helps you.

Worrying about your own brain while you care for someone else’s is a lot to carry. Inside the Care Collective, we talk through both: how to respond to what’s happening with your loved one, and how to take care of yourself along the way. You can learn more here.