Someone asked me yesterday, “Why do you think people aren’t taking the cognitive decline and other trade offs of using AI and digital tools more seriously?”. Of course, this has to do with the dangers of cognitive offloading in the context of use of AI rather than cognitive decline, but I knew what was meant.

I responded with a skeleton reply – it was on LinkedIn, after all, and don’t feel like feeding their AI too much. I also asked a few different AIs, and I was surprised at how poor the responses on that were until I remembered that they were trained on writing done for marketing.

We Ourselves Are Limited

Our brains, according to the latest research, only process information at about 10 bits/second. That’s not very much. Also, our attention spans at last check were at about 47 seconds.

Toss in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the increased income disparity, we can see how it can be more challenging for some than others.

Systems Have Become Complex.

Even accessing help for those at the highest income disparity – we could say poverty, but poverty’s definition is debatable – is fairly complex, though those reading this may not realize it. There are hoops to jump through that take part of that 10 bits/second and 47 second attention span.

The signature of a complex system are specialists that guide people through the system. In the U.S., you have taxes, health insurance, even food stamps. The formal education system, too, requires a level of understanding of finance, and that’s why there are specialists in colleges and universities for that.

These systems are not getting less complex. They are getting more complex.

And So We Multitask

In the world we’ve designed, we have to do multiple things at the same time and a recent studies show that only 2.5% of us are good at that. That’s disturbing, because I know I’ve seen more than 2.5% of the population around me with an ear to their phone while they are driving.

The world we’ve designed, though, leans heavily on technology crutches to keep us going, and the world also requires us to compete for limited resources.

Limping Competition

With limited resources, people who are stuck in competitive complex transactional systems are going to use whatever they can to compete.

The idea that it may be bad for them is outside their hierarchy of needs (we talk about Maslow, but everyone’s also got their own hierarchy). Some refer to this as the ‘3 foot world’.

The risks of cognitive offloading are not seen as a risk in a 3 foot world. The whole concept of cognitive offloading may not even be in that 3 foot world.

And so, we see people doing it.

It’s Fractal

Recently, I watched someone who prompted an AI for a presentation completely fumble through it because she didn’t understand what the AI wrote. But she met the deadline, and it was all fairly plausible though flawed. This was communicated to a room of about 20 people. If she sold 5 people on the presentation that she couldn’t really explain well…

How Good Are These Things Anyway?

One of the first things I learned in the Navy, at the Electronics Technician School way back when, was to check your instruments.

We need to be checking our instruments. People who don’t know how to do that in the context of their prompts and responses are the liability as much as the cognitive offloading… and we’ve only just started with these stabs at AI. Enter vibe coding, apparently named after a vibrator.

We should try to do better.