The Brief August 13, 2025<\/p>\n
ICE faces obstacles in hiring new agents, Trump’s takeover of the police in D.C., and more<\/p>\n
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Health practitioners, companies, and others have for years hailed the potential benefits<\/a> of AI in medicine, from improving medical imaging<\/a> to outperforming doctors at diagnostic assessments<\/a>. The transformative technology has even been predicted by AI enthusiasts to one day help find a \u201ccure to cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n But a new study has found that doctors who regularly used AI actually became less skilled within months.<\/p>\n The study, which was published on Wednesday in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology journal<\/a>, found that over the course of six months, clinicians became over-reliant on AI recommendations and became themselves \u201cless motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the latest study to demonstrate potential adverse outcomes on AI users. An earlier study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that ChatGPT eroded critical thinking skills<\/a>.<\/p>\n How the study was conducted<\/p>\n Researchers across various European institutions conducted an observational study surveying four endoscopy centers in Poland that participated in the Artificial Intelligence in Colonoscopy for Cancer Prevention (ACCEPT<\/a>) trial. The study was funded by the European Commission and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.<\/p>\n As part of the trial, the centers had introduced AI tools for the detection of polyps\u2014growths that can be benign or cancerous\u2014in late 2021. The study looked at 1,443 non-AI-assisted colonoscopies out of a total 2,177 colonoscopies conducted between September 2021 and March 2022. The colonoscopies were performed by 19 experienced endoscopists.<\/p>\n Researchers compared the quality of colonoscopy conducted three months before and three months after AI was implemented. Colonoscopies were conducted either with or without AI assistance, at random. Of those conducted without AI assistance, 795 were conducted before regular AI use was implemented and 648 were conducted after the AI tools were introduced.<\/p>\n What the study found<\/p>\n Three months before AI was introduced, the adenoma detection rate (ADR) was around 28%. Three months after AI was introduced, the rate dropped to 22% when clinicians were unassisted by AI. ADR is a commonly used quality indicator for colonoscopies and represents<\/a> \u201cthe proportion of screening colonoscopies performed by a physician that detect at least one histologically confirmed colorectal adenoma or adenocarcinoma.\u201d Adenomas are precancerous growths, and a higher ADR is associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer.<\/p>\n The study found that AI did help endoscopists with detection when used, but once the assistance was removed, clinicians were worse at detection.<\/p>\n Researchers attributed it to \u201cthe natural human tendency to over-rely\u201d on the recommendations of decision support systems like AI.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine that you want to travel anywhere, and you’re unable to use Google Maps,\u201d Marcin Roma\u0144czyk, co-author of the study and an assistant professor at the Medical University of Silesia, told MedPage Today<\/a>. \u201cWe call it the Google Maps effect. We try to get somewhere, and it\u2019s impossible to use a regular map. It works very similarly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Implications of the study<\/p>\n Omer Ahmad, a consultant gastroenterologist at University College Hospital London who wrote an editorial alongside the study but was not involved in its research, tells TIME that it\u2019s likely that exposure to AI weakened doctors\u2019 visual search habits and alerting gaze patterns, which are critical for detecting polyps.<\/p>\n \u201cIn essence, dependence on AI detection could dull human pattern recognition,\u201d Ahmad says. He adds that regular use of AI could also \u201creduce diagnostic confidence\u201d when AI assistance is withdrawn, or that the endoscopists\u2019 skill of manoeuvring the colonoscope could be reduced.<\/p>\n