AI and the Psychology of Cognitive Surrender (Psychology Today)

[usonian]

Gradual dependence on AI can lead to a threshold you won't notice crossing.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202606/ai-and-the-psychology-of-cognitive-surrender

Key points

• AI subtly erodes our cognitive strength by making delegation seem like self-generated thought.
• After repeatedly turning to AI for answers, the first thing that erodes is tolerance for not knowing.
• True judgment is built by wrestling with uncertainty, not outsourcing discomfort to machines.

AI, by design, reduces the time we spend dwelling inside cognitive uncertainty. However, a mind that has spent long enough outsourcing its tolerance for uncertainty doesn't simply become less patient. I'll argue that it becomes less practiced in the kind of thinking that uncertainty, when embraced long enough, makes possible.

Cognitive surrender implies a conscious decision. What I'm describing is more gradual than that. It's what happens when a tool works so well, for so long, that you forget what you were doing before you picked it up.