Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we work, study, and make decisions, with clear productivity benefits, but scientific research is beginning to document a side effect of AI use as silent as it is significant: after 3–6 months of intensive use, critical thinking abilities can decline significantly.
When we delegate thinking to a machine, our brain stops training itself. Cognitive abilities, like muscles, strengthen with use and weaken when not activated.
This process is gradual, invisible, and cumulative: every single interaction with AI over time can change the way we analyse, understand, and decide.
The risk is even higher for young people: under the age of 25, the brain is still developing, particularly the prefrontal cortex, responsible for critical thinking and decision-making, making young people at that age more vulnerable to cognitive dependency on AI, showing greater deterioration in analytical abilities when using it passively.
Until today, no AI company had addressed this problem. TetiAI, an international artificial intelligence company founded in 2025 by Italian entrepreneurs Marcello Violini and Lorenzo Nargiso, announces the release of Lucid, an active cognitive protection system designed to preserve and develop people's mental abilities during interaction with AI.
The system is already integrated into Teti, the company's assistant, and has been released as open source, meaning public code, freely integrable by any AI company.
Unlike traditional approaches, Lucid, the cognitive protection system integrated into Teti, does not limit AI use and does not introduce friction into the experience. Its operation goes deeper: it analyzes how the user is thinking and adapts the AI's behavior in real time.
The system observes six key dimensions of the cognitive process: the level of autonomy in reasoning, the depth of understanding, the degree of engagement, awareness of one's own thinking, the ability to verify information, and the motivation for using AI.
Based on these signals, the AI changes the way it responds: users who tend to delegate everything are stimulated with questions that force them to reason; those who demonstrate autonomy receive more complex challenges; those showing signs of cognitive fatigue are invited to take breaks. A central element is the distinction between functional delegation and cognitive delegation.
Delegating mechanical tasks is natural and useful; delegating thinking, decisions, or analysis is what weakens cognitive abilities over time. The Lucid system in Teti intervenes exclusively in these cases, keeping operational efficiency intact.
For younger users, the system applies stricter protections, including shorter sessions (30 minutes instead of 45), interaction limits (20 messages instead of 30), and an approach that prioritizes learning over immediate answers. Not to restrict, but to protect a critical phase of cognitive development.
For users under 18, TetiAI has taken an even stronger measure: registration to Teti is not allowed. Scientific literature indicates that, without a clear understanding of what artificial intelligence is and how it influences one's own thinking, interaction with AI can cause significant damage to young people's cognitive development.
At that age, the ability to distinguish between one's own reasoning and that generated by a machine is not yet mature: the risk is not just dependency, but the formation of cognitive habits that fundamentally compromise the ability to think independently.
“We believe that teaching the difference between human thinking and artificial thinking should become part of education from school onward. Understanding where your own reasoning ends and where a machine's begins will be a fundamental skill for everyone's future,” Marcello Violini, CEO of TetiAI told That's Technology.
The methodology behind Lucid, the cognitive protection technology in Teti, is grounded in over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications spanning neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and educational science. The system integrates established principles such as adaptive support, which is gradually reduced as the user becomes more competent – and active learning, according to which information processed independently is retained far more effectively.
“Cognitive protection should become a universal standard, like seatbelts in cars,” says Marcello, CEO of TetiAI.
“The risk is not in any single interaction, but in the cumulative effect of thousands of interactions over time.”
That is why TetiAI has chosen to make Lucid open source: not as a competitive advantage, but as shared infrastructure. The code is public, the scientific documentation is included, and any company can integrate it into their systems. The goal is to make cognitive protection a new standard in artificial intelligence.
That is why Lucid is already operational inside Teti, available on iOS, Android, and web. In the coming months, TetiAI will publish real-world implementation results, contributing to defining a new paradigm: an AI that does not replace human thinking, but protects and strengthens it.
Teti: teti.ai
Lucid: teti.ai/hub/lucid
