ChatGPT's Mount Stupid: Why AI Is Sending Us All to the Peak of Overconfidence

ByAnonymous
|Editor:Mordecai
|Updated:January 7, 2026
ChatGPT's Mount Stupid: Why AI Is Sending Us All to the Peak of Overconfidence
Since the explosive launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative AI tools have democratized access to information like never before. Anyone can query complex topics and receive fluent, authoritative-sounding answers in seconds. But this convenience comes with a hidden cost: a widespread illusion that we're smarter and more knowledgeable than we actually are.

ChatGPT's Mount Stupid: Why AI Is Sending Us All to the Peak of Overconfidence

Since the explosive launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative AI tools have democratized access to information like never before. Anyone can query complex topics and receive fluent, authoritative-sounding answers in seconds. But this convenience comes with a hidden cost: a widespread illusion that we're smarter and more knowledgeable than we actually are.

Psychologists have long described the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people with limited competence overestimate their abilities—often landing on the infamous "Peak of Mount Stupid" before reality sets in.

With AI like ChatGPT, this curve is flattening—or worse, inverting. Recent research shows that AI assistance causes everyone to overestimate their performance, with more AI-literate users showing the greatest overconfidence. It's a "reverse Dunning-Kruger effect," where familiarity with the tool breeds even more unwarranted certainty.

The Reverse Dunning-Kruger: AI Makes Experts Cockier

A 2025 study from Aalto University found that when users tackle logical reasoning tasks with ChatGPT, the classic Dunning-Kruger pattern vanishes. Instead of novices overestimating the most, all participants overestimated their scores—and those who rated themselves as highly AI-literate did so the most dramatically.[^1][^2]

This reversal happens because AI offloads cognitive effort: users prompt once, accept the output, and assume mastery without deep engagement. As one analysis put it, AI puts us all on "Mount Stupid," fooling even skilled individuals into thinking the tool's output is their own genius.[^3]

Cognitive Laziness: Your Brain on ChatGPT

Heavy reliance on AI doesn't just inflate egos—it literally reduces brain activity. An MIT Media Lab study monitored participants writing essays over months, using EEG to track neural engagement.

Those relying solely on ChatGPT showed the lowest brain connectivity, with activity dropping up to 55% compared to unaided writers. Over time, they became "lazier" thinkers, resorting to copy-paste and struggling to recall their own work. The researchers coined this "cognitive debt": offloading thinking to AI weakens memory, creativity, and critical reasoning.[^4][^5]

Hallucinations Rub Off: Confident AI Breeds Confident Users

AI models like ChatGPT are programmed to sound certain, even when wrong—a trait amplified by training techniques that reward fluent overconfidence. This "verbalized overconfidence" transfers to users, who trust hallucinations because they arrive wrapped in authoritative tone.[^6]

The result? People feel knowledgeable without earning it, spreading superficial insights online and in real life.

The Bright Side—and the Warning

AI isn't inherently bad; used mindfully, it augments human intelligence. The danger lies in passive reliance, which shortcuts genuine learning.

As we hurtle into an AI-saturated future, remember: easy answers can create the illusion of expertise. True knowledge still requires effort, skepticism, and climbing down from Mount Stupid.

[^1]: "AI use makes us overestimate our cognitive performance, study reveals." TechXplore, October 28, 2025. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-ai-overestimate-cognitive-reveals.html

[^2]: "New Research Warns That AI Is Causing a 'Reverse Dunning-Kruger Effect'." Inc., November 7, 2025. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/science-warns-that-ai-is-causing-a-reverse-dunning-kruger-effect/91259315

[^3]: "AI's Ego Inflation: The New Dunning-Kruger Twist Exposed." WebProNews, November 11, 2025. https://www.webpronews.com/ais-ego-inflation-the-new-dunning-kruger-twist-exposed/

[^4]: Kosmyna et al. "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task." arXiv preprint, June 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

[^5]: "ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study." TIME, June 23, 2025. https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/

[^6]: "Digital Dunning-Kruger: How We Trained AI to Be Wrong with Confidence." Boxcars.ai Blog, June 19, 2025. https://blog.boxcars.ai/p/digital-dunning-kruger-how-we-trained