Cognitive Debt of offloading to AI

What is Cognitive Debt?

Cognitive Debt was first coined by MIT's Paper: Your brain on chatgpt: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. The researched showed what happens when people lean too heavily on AI for writing. Using EEG brain scans, it showed significant decline in cognitive activity when students used AI to help them write, leading to a warning on what this may imply for people when expose to AI, without guided and intentional use, that doesn't hurt students ability to think critically and communicate effectively.

A slew of other research has shown that the challenges of AI offloading and outsourcing, especially without users reflecting on what they are offloading, will lead to long term cognitive debt and even social relationship deterioration as we forego developing cognitive and social capacity building and development within ourselves because of heavy AI use.

More importantly, as AI becomes normalized in our use of communication, it will strip away the cultural nuances, people skills, and TRUST building needed to align organizations and society. Human relationships come with messy learning curves that requires development in understanding of our mental models and limitations, empathy with each other, and even mistakes in miscommunication to build more flexible understanding of the world without limiting us from learning experiences that will help broaden our perspectives. 

"Let's not use AI to strip away our agency and the joys of learning through life's mistakes"

- Olivia Heslinga

Discussion with Mia Negru and Olivia Heslinga: Life with Artificials Youtube Channel

The discussion breaks down how we address current research and it's implications on our own individual usage and reliance of AI in our daily lives. Tracking how you are using AI, what you're offloading and outsourcing in cognitive skills and social relationships will have long term consequences that require reflection, recovery, and building resilience and discipline in one-self to ensure you maintain and cultivate your own development in this new age of technology that does the 'thinking' for you. 

Additional resources: 

👉 Check out show notes and transcript of the webinar at LifeWithArtificials.com​
👉 Check out additional research on Dataethics.EU : The Price You Pay for AI Convenience Is Cognitive Debt

Other resources mentioned in the discussion for further reading: 

1) The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI

2) How Culture Shapes What People Want from AI

3) Humans inherit artificial intelligence biases

4) Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence

5) AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance

6) Dark personality traits are associated with academic misconduct, frustration, negative thinking, and generative AI use habits: the case of Sichuan art universities

7) Cultural problems with AI models (primarily from the USA)
​Video exposing WEIRD view points in AI

Paper: Exploring AI ethics in global contexts: a culturally responsive, psychologically realist approach

8) Coding in the red - 61 Billion Workdays to fix vibe coding and technical d