Sarah Armstrong

This case report describes a woman in her mid-20s with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder and a history of strong social, academic, and occupational functioning who developed a pattern of functional dependence on ChatGPT, outsourcing routine cognitive and interpersonal tasks such as composing emails, interpreting social interactions, predicting the future, and making decisions, and becoming increasingly uncomfortable completing such tasks independently; the authors frame this as cognitive offloading, reduced confidence in independent judgment, and reinforcement of externalized thinking using the I-PACE model, and suggest that the unlimited accessibility of AI tools may intensify reassurance seeking and worsen tolerance of uncertainty.

This case report describes a woman in her mid-20s with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder and a history of strong social, academic, and occupational functioning who developed a pattern of functional dependence on ChatGPT, outsourcing routine cognitive and interpersonal tasks such as composing emails, interpreting social interactions, predicting the future, and making decisions, and becoming increasingly uncomfortable completing such tasks independently; the authors frame this as cognitive offloading, reduced confidence in independent judgment, and reinforcement of externalized thinking using the I-PACE model, and suggest that the unlimited accessibility of AI tools may intensify reassurance seeking and worsen tolerance of uncertainty.