Your Brain is Already Switching Off

Hi ... 

MIT just finished brain-scanning people using ChatGPT.

The results? Their brains literally switched off.

Not metaphorically. Actually switched off. The scans showed weaker connections between brain regions associated with critical thinking and memory. 

Like watching someone's mind atrophy in real-time.

The researchers called it "cognitive debt" — your mental muscles wasting away from lack of use, like a broken arm emerging weakened after months in a cast.

But here's the kicker: This isn't a bug. It's a design feature.

Microsoft's own research reveals "a key irony of automation" — by handling routine tasks and leaving exceptions to humans, you deprive people of the practice they need to strengthen their cognitive abilities. Result? They're "atrophied and unprepared when exceptions arise."

They know exactly what they're selling.

We already can't navigate without GPS. We've forgotten phone numbers because our phones remember them. Now we're outsourcing thinking itself.

And we're volunteering for it.

Students use AI for essays, then can't remember what they wrote because their brains never engaged. Workers use AI for reports and lose the ability to analyse problems themselves.

The scariest part? Most people won't notice it happening to them. Like the frog in slowly boiling water, they'll be intellectually cooked before they realise the heat's been turned up.

This is the world I was thinking about when I wrote Virtual Witness.

Tech billionaire Spanker doesn't just want AI to think for us — he needs it to. His vision only works if humans become too intellectually lazy to resist. A population that can't think critically can't question who's pulling the strings.

Sound familiar?

In my world, detective Harry Hawkins represents the last of the old guard — someone who still trusts his instincts over algorithms, who asks questions instead of accepting answers.

But even he's about to discover that when AI claims to be a "witness" to murder, the line between human and artificial intelligence becomes dangerously blurred.

Will you notice when your mind starts going soft?

Virtual Witness isn't just a thriller — it's tomorrow's headlines wrapped in today's murder mystery.