ChatGPT May Be Quietly Eroding Your Memory

Update your memory, Tech Insiders.

What happens when AI does your thinking, deepfakes speak with your voice, and your PC instantly translates your thoughts into settings? You get a future where convenience overtakes control, and reality is running on borrowed logic.

Here's what you need to know today:

Your Brain on ChatGPT: A Cognitive Meltdown?

A new study finds that relying on AI to write may leave your memory running on fumes.

MIT researchers placed EEG caps on 54 essay writers for four months and divided them into three teams: Team ChatGPT, Team Google, and Team Brainpower. The ChatGPT crew churned out text at lightning speed, but their neural Wi-Fi bars dropped to dial-up. In fact, 83% couldn't quote a single line they'd "written" mere minutes earlier. Ouch.

The scientists refer to this as "cognitive debt," similar to the GPS effect that renders your internal compass ineffective when you outsource directions. Meanwhile, the self-reliant writers showed neural fireworks—alpha, theta, and delta bursting like the Fourth of July.

Plot twist: When the unplugged wordsmiths sprinkled in ChatGPT after flexing their own neurons first, their connectivity shot up. The takeaway? Use AI tools like spell check, which can be helpful for cleanup but not a substitute for knowing how to write effectively.

OpenAI is silent on the matter, and the study is still under review.

Why it matters: If your paycheck depends on fresh ideas (raising hand), letting a chatbot hog all the mental reps could erode your creativity, which atrophies fast when you stop giving your brain a real workout. And once your original thinking dulls, even the best prompts won’t save you.

Brains before bots, folks!

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Insider Intel

Mu Puts Windows 11 Settings on AI Steroids

Say hello to Mu, a mini but mighty language model that lives directly on new Copilot+ PCs.

Mu is designed to take your natural-language grumbling—like "make my mouse bigger"—and turn it into the exact setting tweak you need. No hunting through menus is required.

Mu isn't some cloud-based behemoth. It runs right on your laptop's NPU (basically, your computer's brain for AI stuff). And it's fast… like 200-tokens-per-second, half a-second-response-time fast.

Even more impressive? It's tiny. Microsoft reduced its size to a tenth of that of other models by employing clever architectural tricks and hardware-friendly tweaks. Translation: more power, less lag, and no internet needed.

Right now, it's helping Windows Settings understand what you mean, not just what you type. But it's easy to imagine Mu expanding into other corners of the OS soon.

Mu is like having IT on speed dial… minus the ticket backlog.

Flash Bytes

Security Alerts

Deepfake Fraud Bleeds $200M in 90 Days

A Q1 2025 Resemble AI report logged 163 deepfake incidents, including everything from CFO voice clones that stole $25 million to nonconsensual explicit videos.

Private citizens now account for 34% of victims, and some tools require only five seconds of audio to spoof you. A new Take It Down Act forces social platforms to yank explicit fakes within 48 hours—but businesses should adopt zero-trust voice and video protocols now.

To stay safe, businesses should train their staff to spot fakes, verify sensitive requests across multiple channels, protect executive media, and develop a response plan before the next scam occurs.

DHS Flags Elevated Iranian Cyberthreat

Just hours after US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites, DHS warned of likely cyber retaliation—and it didn't take long. The first confirmed attack hit Trump's Truth Social platform in a DDoS blitz by Iranian-aligned hackers, marking a potential wave of low-level strikes on poorly secured US targets.

Though a ceasefire is now in place, its fragility has kept water utilities, food suppliers, and local infrastructure on high alert. And CISA is bracing for misinformation campaigns, too.

What it means for you: Disruptions could hit everything from workplace systems to utilities at home, especially if software isn't updated and defenses are lax.

Industry Shakeups

AI Compute Power Is Concentrated in Just 32 Countries

The AI gold rush is global, but only a handful of countries are holding the shovels.

Oxford researchers mapped specialized AI data centers and found that only 32 countries host them. The US and China run more than 90%, while Africa and South America are nearly blank. Lacking local GPUs, startups from Kenya to Argentina rent costly cloud time overseas, which slows innovation and fuels a talent drain.

Nations are scrambling. India's subsidizing clusters, Brazil pledged $4 billion, and the EU eyes roughly $232 billion—but supply is bottlenecked by Nvidia chips and geopolitical strings.

Without new capacity, the AI era risks mirroring the oil economy—few producers, many dependents.

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