I would argue that intellectual laziness can and will lead to cognitive decline as much as physical laziness can and will lead to muscle atrophy. It’s akin to using a maps app to get from point a to b but not ever remembering the route, even though someone has done it 100 times.

I don’t know the percentage of people who are still critically thinking while using AI tools, but I can first hand see many students just copy pasting content to their school work.

Fully agree, I think the cognitive decline is probably over time. Look at old, retired people, how they go from feeling like a teenager, to barely remembering anything as an example.