AI Chatbots Are Making People All Think the Same, Study Says

Part of what makes us human is the unique way we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT could erode that uniqueness and cause humans to think and communicate in similar ways, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who co-authored a new opinion paper.

“Individuals differ in the way they write, reason, and see the world,” Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California and first author of the paper, said in a statement.

“When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic styles, perspectives, and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,” Sourati continued.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people around the world use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.

Thinking inside the box

Pew Research found that a third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the figure for 2023. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: two-thirds report using chatbots, and nearly a third use them daily.

Companies are also banking on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.

So we use AI a lot. But the danger is that we can lose the diversity of our ways of thinking. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people create themselves.

According to the authors of the article, the data used to train them partly explains why LLMs encourage homogenized thinking.

“Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages ​​and ideologies, their results often reflect a narrow, asymmetrical slice of the human experience,” says Sourati.

Why diverse thinking is important

There’s a good reason the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thinking reduces pluralism, which is essentially based on the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.

“This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-standing principle that good judgment requires exposure to varied thinking,” the authors write in the article. “If not controlled, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability.”

So we use different ways of thinking to find more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.

“The problem is not just that LLMs shape the way people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,” says Sourati.

The authors also say that this trend affects even people who don’t use chatbots.

“If many people around me think and speak a certain way, and I do things differently, I would feel pressure to align with them, because it would seem like a more credible or socially acceptable way to express my ideas,” Sourati says.