Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are helping professionals work faster, but growing evidence suggests they could also weaken the very skills people have spent years developing, prompting researchers to call for urgent studies on how to prevent AI driven deskilling.
The concern is particularly strong in medicine. A survey of US health care workers published this month in nature found that 70% of nurses and 77% of physicians worry that over reliance on AI systems could reduce their clinical skills.
Researchers say those fears are beginning to find support in real world evidence. The study published last October in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that experienced physicians became less effective at detecting precancerous intestinal growths when an AI tool they had grown accustomed to using was suddenly unavailable.
The study followed physicians in Poland who specialized in endoscopy and had each performed at least 2,000 colonoscopies during their careers. Researchers introduced an AI system that analysed colonoscopy images in real time and highlighted adenomas, a type of precancerous lesion. The system was available only on certain days, allowing researchers to compare doctors’ performance with and without AI assistance.
Before the technology was introduced, doctors detected at least one adenoma in 28.4% of colonoscopies. After three months of using the AI system, the detection rate during procedures performed without AI assistance fell to 22.4%.
The findings suggest that even highly experienced clinicians may become less effective at tasks they routinely perform if they become dependent on AI, researchers said. The study authors argued that continuous exposure to AI tools could leave clinicians less motivated, less focused and less responsible when making decisions without technological support.
The issue is not limited to medicine. Researchers at AI company Anthropic have also begun investigating whether software engineers lose skills when they rely heavily on AI coding assistants.
In a randomized controlled trial involving 52 software engineers, participants completed a basic coding task with access to online resources, while half were also encouraged to use an AI assistant. The study is part of a broader effort to understand how AI affects long term expertise.
As AI becomes a routine part of workplaces across industries, researchers say the challenge will be finding ways to capture the technology’s productivity benefits without allowing essential human expertise to fade.
