Instant AI Answers could make Humans Less Intelligent

The Royal Observatory Greenwich has warned that AI tools that instantly answer questions and complex problems could make humans less intelligent.

The historic scientific institution said the rise of AI systems capable of instantly answering questions and solving complex problems risks reducing people’s willingness to question, evaluate and explore information themselves.

Paddy Rodgers, director of the Royal Museums Greenwich group, which oversees the Observatory, said its centuries-long history demonstrated the importance of human curiosity and independent thinking.

He said: “A reliance solely on instant answers risks losing the habits of questioning and evaluation that underpin knowledge, expertise and innovation.”

Rodgers made the comments as the Royal Observatory undergoes a transformation project called First Light.

The initiative aims to modernise the institution while celebrating more than 350 years of astronomical research and scientific discovery.

Rodgers told the BBC: “The project hopes to ‘seize on the passion of all the astronomers over the last 350 years, and interpret that passion through science’.”

He acknowledged that technological innovation has always played a major role in scientific breakthroughs.

However, he argued that discoveries would not have happened without humans actively pursuing questions and exploring unexpected findings.

According to Rodgers, early astronomers “built a huge amount of data about the heavens which would subsequently be used for things that they had never thought about”.

Their work often involved tasks “a machine would not do”.

“The human beings did, and it ended up being a huge resource that could be used 150 years after they had written it up to help to verify ideas that people were having about what else impacted navigation on Earth.”

The warning comes as AI tools rapidly become integrated into everyday life, education and scientific research.

In 2024, computer scientist Demis Hassabis shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work involving proteins, often described as the building blocks of life.

Sir Demis, chief executive of DeepMind, used AI to predict the structures of almost all known proteins through a tool called AlphaFold2.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has described AI as a “transformation” of “cognitive excellence”.

Academics and students have also highlighted the benefits from AI-assisted learning and research.

A lecturer at Oxford Brookes University told the BBC in 2025 that “when used responsibly, AI tools enable students to direct their attention to the more important parts of learning and improve their self-development”.

However, they warned that students who simply “outsource their thinking” to AI would expose the technology’s limitations.

Generative AI products capable of producing text, images, video and audio responses continue to evolve rapidly.

Chatbots have expanded beyond simple digital assistants into conversational companions, while image-generation systems have become increasingly capable of creating photorealistic content.

Rodgers also warned that AI-generated answers can distance users from original and verifiable sources of information.

He said earlier internet tools such as Wikipedia still allowed users to trace information back to primary sources and judge whether it was reliable.

He added: “With previous online tools such as Wikipedia, ‘if you were interested in something you could perhaps go back to a fundamental source and check it… and see whether or not you found something that was reliable’.”

Such source material can disappear in AI-generated summaries, he added, meaning “you’re getting more and more distanced from relatable or checkable information”.

The concerns come as AI-generated summaries increasingly replace traditional search results online.

AI Overviews now appear at the top of many Google searches, while similar AI-driven information tools are being tested across social media platforms including TikTok and X.