The Great Essay Experiment (Or: How 83% of People Couldn’t Quote Themselves)

The Great Essay Experiment (Or: How 83% of People Couldn’t Quote Themselves)

In mid 2025, Researchers at MIT published their study. They did the most researcher thing ever:...

raw_mcodify (Published By)
January 27, 2026
1 min read

In mid 2025, Researchers at MIT published their study. They did the most researcher thing ever: they gathered people in a room, made them write essays, and took notes. Group one got full LLM access. Group two could only use search engines, which is basically what Boomers think ‘using technology’ means. And the group three got the worst deal: they had to use their one brain, which might have felt illegal.

The outcomes? An astounding 83.3% of the AI-assisted group were unable to correctly quote from their own essays. Their own essays, people. Come on, they’re supposed to be their own words. The ones they had purportedly “written” just moments earlier.

It’s similar to ordering takeout so frequently that you forget what’s in your fridge…. If you even have a fridge.

This isn’t about demonizing ChatGPT or waging war on language models, so don’t start sharpening your pitchforks, AI fanboys. It involves posing a more awkward query: When was the last time you tackled a creative challenge without first turning to AI? When was the last time you sat with an issue long enough to feel truly stuck?

Your brain is probably incapable of remembering if you are.

Credits

Vikram
Shah

Editor

Supriya
Nair

Producer

Akshaya
Zachariah

Illustrator

Amal
Shiyas

Assistant Editor

Medha
Venkat

Copy Editor

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