Google's AI Overviews Make Users Dumber

Google has created a monster… a system that offers all the answers you need without ever having to leave its page. AI Overviews seem like the ultimate solution to modern intellectual laziness . But new studies reveal that they're not only killing the web as we know it, they're literally making those who use them dumber. And Big G knows it very well.

Pew Research: Google's AI Overviews Are Atrophying the Brain and Destroying the Web

The numbers from a new Pew Research Center study speak for themselves: only 1% of users who see a Google AI summary then click on the link to the original site. The study, based on the browsing activity of 900 Americans, demonstrates that AI overviews aren't just changing the way we search for information: they're killing the very idea of in-depth analysis . Why bother reading a full article when Google already gives you the answer in three lines?

It's not just laziness. It's the systematic death of the ecosystem that made the Internet as we know it possible. Every website, every blog, every online publication thrives on user clicks. When Google intercepts 99% of that traffic with its summaries, it's essentially cutting off the oxygen to the entire web.

Google built its empire by promising to drive traffic to websites , and now it's using its dominant position to keep all that traffic.

Sundar Pichai's involuntary confession

Google's CEO practically admitted the strategy without realizing it. He explained that with AI , people search for and access information differently. Instead of clicking on links to visit websites, people stop at the answer Google gives them directly. Period. It's a brilliant move from a business perspective: you get everyone on your platform without scaring them away. But for the rest of the internet, it's a massacre.

The funny thing is, he also said that AI pushes people to search more, because they discover that Google can answer everything. And that's exactly the trick: if Google already gives you all the answers, why would anyone ever leave Google?

Microsoft discovers that AI makes people stupid

As if that weren't enough, Microsoft conducted a separate study that confirms what many suspected: overreliance on AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot atrophies critical thinking. Simply put, it makes us all dumber.

We're trading the ability to think for the convenience of instant answers . And users themselves are starting to recognize the problem. The "quick fix" promised by AI is creating a generation of users who have lost the habit of digging deeper, asking questions, and seeking out multiple sources. Why bother when AI has already done the work for us?

The problem of disappearing sources

A disturbing detail that emerged from the study is that AI Overviews are increasingly drawing from Wikipedia , Reddit , and YouTube instead of traditional websites. It's a vicious cycle: the less traffic the original sites receive, the less authoritative Google considers them, and the more the AI relies on secondary or tertiary sources.

The result is an increasingly homogenized web, where information is filtered through an ever-decreasing number of sources. This is the opposite of the diversity and richness of information that the internet promised at its inception.

To top it all off, BBC studies have shown that ChatGPT and Copilot struggle to distinguish opinion from fact when generating news summaries . So not only are we relying on systems that make us less capable of critical thinking, but these systems aren't even capable of critical thinking themselves.

It's a cycle of intellectual degradation : users increasingly less capable of evaluating information relying on systems incapable of evaluating information.

The ultimate paradox is that Big G is killing the ecosystem that made its very existence possible . Without websites rich in original content to index , Google will become a library that burns books to keep warm. It's a short-term strategy that sacrifices long-term sustainability for immediate control.

But perhaps Google has calculated that when that moment comes, it will be so dominant that it will no longer need the traditional web. It will have become the web itself.