OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on an episode of the "Invest Like the Best" podcast that aired on Tuesday that one of AI's underappreciated risks is "cognitive atrophy," asking how people can use the tools while "stretching our brains more and more." His comments follow warnings from researchers, including MIT researcher Nataliya Kosmyna, whose preliminary study found people using generative AI to write essays performed worse over time than participants using Google or no aid, and theoretical neuroscientist Vivienne Ming, who described the risk as "chronic substitution" that could weaken cognitive reserve. Altman is not the only tech leader to raise concerns; Arthur Mensch, CEO of Paris-based Mistral AI, told The Times last year that AI's biggest risk may be "deskilling" workers. Altman also outlined a "pretty magical" future with a personal AI that could read documents, listen to meetings, recall emails, and generate ideas overnight, but said powerful models may struggle to replicate human judgment, noting "the world may need like a new kind of word for the kind of judgment that people are very good at, that AI seems to really deeply struggle with."