Hi, I'm Mircea, the founder of ErgoSums. Like many of you, I use AI daily for software architecture and development. Love it. Addicted to it. About a year ago though I noticed something quite embarrassing to admit out loud. I was struggling with various cognitive aspects in both my professional and personal life. In meetings, someone would quote a statistic and I'd nod along although my gut was telling me something was off. I'd look at a project estimate and had trouble telling if it was wildly off. At dinner, a friend would make a terrible argument and I'd feel the flaw but couldn't articulate it. I could feel some ”muscles” had gone soft. Not that the skills were gone. But they were fading from disuse. So I started looking for the source of this. Turns out, there are already a lot of studies on the subject of AI-induced cognitive atrophy. A few examples: A 2025 study of 666 participants (Gerlich, Societies journal) found a significant negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical thinking ability. The MIT Media Lab measured a 47% drop in neural engagement when writing with ChatGPT. And the effect persists even after you stop using the AI. The mechanism is based on cognitive offloading. The thinking you delegate, you gradually lose the ability to do. Like a muscle you stopped training. So I built ErgoSums to exercise those muscles. Six categories, each targeting a different cognitive axis: → Fermi estimations. Can you still decompose a quantity problem without a prompt? → Logical fallacy detection. Can you spot the flaw in an argument on your own? → Pattern recognition. Sequences, matrices, analogies → Data interpretation. Can you read a chart critically and catch what's misleading? → Probabilistic reasoning. Base rates, Bayes, conjunction fallacy → Cognitive bias detection. Can you recognize the bias driving a decision? 4+ exercises per day, about 10 minutes, is an effective daily dose to combat cognitive atrophy. The daily training is completely free. Permanently. Not a trial, not a teaser. People who want to train harder (unlimited exercises, offline mode, detailed reports) can support the project through a supporter/premium tier, but the core product is complete at the free level. You can try the daily challenges right now without signing up. Just go to ergosums.com and click any card. Three things I'd love feedback on: Does the training feel substantive, or does it feel like a quiz? What would make you come back tomorrow? Is "cognitive training against AI-induced atrophy" a real category, or am I fooling myself?

ErgoSums

Daily training against AI-induced cognitive atrophy

Daily training against AI-induced cognitive atrophy