Neural Connectivity
The Brain-AI Connection, Elsa, and the Anti-AI Librarian
Infophilia, a positive psychology of information | June 28, 2025 - Vol. 3, Issue 38
✨Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly letter exploring how our love of information and connections can help us all thrive, individually and collectively.
Cite as:
Coleman, A. S. (2025). Neural Connectivity: The brain-AI connection, Elsa, and the anti-AI librarian Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 3 (38).
Updates
To Cultivating Civic Infophilia: Protecting Public Knowledge by Practicing Freedom of Expression, The Future of Public Knowledge, and Thank You, Dr. Carla Hayden:
Judgments in two of the major lawsuits brought by authors against AI companies for copyright infringement, Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta, were handed down. There are positive and negative takeaways to both for authors according to the Authors Guild:
Bartz v. Anthropic: The court ruled that both #1 and #2—the acts of training Claude on books, however obtained, and digitizing purchased (i.e., legally acquired) print books for internal storage—constituted fair use. However, it found that #3—for Anthropic to knowingly download and copy pirated books for its library (from which it made subset copies to train its AI)—was not fair use. The case will proceed to trial on this issue and the resulting damages.
Kadrey v. Meta: The court ruled in favor of Meta, holding on summary judgment that Meta’s copying of books to train its AI was fair use. Meta won only on technical grounds, a matter of procedure, not on the merits of the law. The court explains how the market harm caused by Meta LLMs will almost certainly diminish the value of the authors’ works and the copyright incentives to write new books, stating that market harm is the most important factor, but finds that the plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient evidence of that harm.
“Libraries are one of the pillars and cornerstones of a democracy, and free public libraries are part of a civic infrastructure that we need to have a safe democracy.” Carla Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress, was featured on PBS News Hour. She’s also scheduled to speak at the American Library Association’s annual conference that is currently underway in Philadelphia on June 28 (Sat 1-2 pm ET).
Neural Connectivity
The Brain-AI Connection, Elsa, and the Anti-AI Librarian
From my experiences at the Charleston Conference last fall, one story stands out. Two librarians were discussing the purpose of education. To one, education meant living well, like the French, enjoying a glass of wine and the finer things of life. To the other, the goal of education was to change human behaviors, especially wrong beliefs often ingrained from one’s social group, by learning to think critically. Both librarians agreed that education ultimately helps one meet the challenges of life well, but they differed in their interpretations of what living well and human flourishing entails.
Now, we're only a few short months from the third anniversary of the public release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. ChatGPT is estimated to have 500 to 600 million monthly active users (MAU) as of mid-2025 and a goal of reaching one billion MAU by the end of 2025. US students across K-12 and higher education represent a major share of ChatGPT's active user base, with adoption and regular use growing rapidly in educational settings.
Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT, Claude, Co-Pilot, and Gemini have sparked significant public and policy maker interest. They are widely regarded as transformative technologies across multiple areas. The four mentioned above are considered to be the fastest adopted technologies in history.
Besides serving as conversational and search assistants, and productivity agents, the market for AI companions, including AI-human romance, is also growing. The AI companion market, valued at approx. $28 billion in 2024 is projected to reach between $140 billion by 2030, and $183 billion by 2031.
The AI race is heating up as well. US government agencies like the FDA have started to integrate AI tools into daily workflows with an aggressive timeline, potentially affecting millions of Americans.
It is time to examine not just what AI can do for us, but what it might be doing to us.
Neural Connectivity, the Foundation of Human Well-being
Neural connectivity is a critical aspect of your overall well-being and influences all aspects of your life from mental health to physical health, from learning and other cognitive skills to emotional well-being, from survival to growth, and from living well to flourishing. The evidence for the brain-body connection has been accumulating over the years. By adopting a lifestyle that supports brain health, such as regular exercise, a nutritious diet, and adequate sleep, you can help preserve and enhance your neural connectivity, leading to better mental and physical health.
Studies have shown that information technology is addictive. Adaptive infophilia theory recognizes that information itself can be addictive — not just the technologies that deliver it. The pursuit of information and knowledge activates reward pathways in the brain, and this can lead to behaviors that range from healthy to maladaptive. Strategies such as reducing screen time and practicing digital detox and digital sobriety have resulted in beneficial health effects.
What about AI? What is the effect of Generative AI (AI) on human well-being?
The Brain-AI Connection: What the Science Shows
A 206-page study from MIT titled "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task" used EEG analysis to examine how different information-gathering methods affect brain activity during essay writing. The results show:
Participants using only their brains showed the strongest and most distributed neural connectivity
Search engine users demonstrated intermediate brain engagement
LLM users exhibited the weakest overall brain connectivity
This pattern of reduced neural engagement persisted across multiple sessions spanning four months, suggesting the effects aren't merely temporary. The media has misinterpreted some of the study’s findings but I want to highlight one solid takeaway.