The Enshittification of Creativity and What Comes After

Last summer, a group of MIT scientists split 54 participants into three groups to write essays. The first group used LLMs, the second group used search engines, and the third used their old-fashioned brain. “Cognitive load” was measured with electroencephalography (EEG).

EEG showed that the Brain group showed the strongest and most distributed networks when it came to brain connectivity. The Search group showed moderate engagement. The LLM group showed the weakest.

Worst: the LLM users weren’t passionate about the essays they wrote. The “self-reported ownership” of the essays was the lowest in the LLM group and highest in the Brain group. LLM users couldn’t even quote their own essays. Over four months, LLM users showed under-performance at neural, linguistic, behavioral levels.

The MIT team called the study “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.”

Cognitive debt might seem like a nicer word than "dumb.” It’s worse.

“Cognitive debt” means you’re paying for your brain power on credit. You can go deeper and deeper into debt. Using AI for everything doesn’t just make you dumb. It bankrupts your cognition. If you believe the science.

In 2023, the American Dialect Society chose “enshittification” as the word of the year. The term, coined by futurist Cory Doctorow, describes the evolution of technology products that launch as a brand new hope for humanity and eventually become a brand new burden.

Enshittification is a catchy term for platform decay: the process where online products and services decline in quality over time. Doctorow points to Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, and Twitter as case studies to prove his point.

In 2025’s Enshittification, Doctorow outlines the model of enshittification:

1. First, platforms are good to their users.

2. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.

3. Next, they abuse those business customers to claw all the value for themselves.

4. Finally, they have become a giant pile of shit.

As any millennial can remember, this describes the journey of Uber from founding to maturity. Uber replaced taxis not just because of convenience, but because of cost. Rides were half the price of your average cab, with half the aggression and discomfort.

A better, cheaper, more convenient service wins. When victory is complete, the prices begin to normalize because the users of the service can no longer live without it - and don’t remember how.

We haven’t reached the enshittification period of AI. But, if Doctorow’s model is correct, it isn’t just coming. It’s inevitable. The first step? Become the new generation’s cheat code for a better life.

In October 2025, College Board found that 84% of high school students use AI for “school work tasks such as brainstorming, revising essays, and research.” About a quarter of US workers say that AI is doing some part of their job.

AI tools are becoming not just complementary but necessary to our memory and creativity, our productivity and our personality and our expertise. Our workflows and our work. Does it matter if, like the MIT study found, that we don’t remember what we made? What happens if we don’t remember how to make it? Isn’t the point just to make it and move on?

If we follow the evolution of enshittification, then AI tools will first conquer all the creative and cognitive territory that can be conquered. And then subscriptions will jump from $40 a month to $400 a month to whatever cost the market will allow. And then the question is when we’ve enshittified our own memory and creativity, productivity and personality and expertise, workflows and work as a product, will we remember how to live without the voice we start trusting more than we own?

And does it matter?

Want to get more Litverses about AI?

Why Jerry Seinfeld Hates AI

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June 25, 2024

AI, on the other hand, is the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever invented in mankind’s time on Earth. Oh, so you can’t do the work? Is that what you’re telling me? You can’t figure it out. This seems to be the justification of AI – I couldn’t do it. This is something to be embarrassed about.…