Three years ago, I wrote a post asking whether artificial intelligence might eventually place human cognition on the technological chopping block. At that time, AI was beginning to reveal what it could do, and the concern seemed fairly straightforward. Innovation has always created obsolescence. Machines replaced physical labor, calculators took over much of routine arithmetic, and digital technologies displaced entire industries. But now the domain of innovation is less about that old stereo or calculator but human thought itself.
OK, cognition hasn’t become obsolete per se. In fact, AI has made us astonishingly more capable. Scientists can explore hypotheses faster, physicians can interrogate complex medical information, and you and I can analyze, write, code, or create at levels that previously required specialized (and expensive) expertise. It’s truly remarkable and I don’t think we should diminish it simply because we’re concerned about some of the consequences.
I’ve called one expression of this Iterative Intelligence—the back-and-forth between human and machine in which an idea gets questioned, reframed, and sometimes pushed somewhere neither would have taken it alone. And while this is new, it also harkens back to the venerable Socratic dialogue. Used in this context, the technology doesn’t necessarily reduce thinking. Sometimes it creates more of it. So I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the simple question of whether AI is making us smarter or dumber. Something more complicated may be happening.
Obsolescence Begins With Necessity
We tend to think of obsolescence as an endpoint. Something works until a better technology arrives and eventually the old thing gets thrown away. Film cameras, fax machines, and typewriters come to mind. But before any of them disappeared, something more consequential happens and this is important to recognize. We simply stopped needing them. And perhaps that’s a better way to think about cognition in the context of AI.
AI doesn’t have to destroy my ability to write. It only has to make writing something myself less necessary. My memory doesn’t have to deteriorate if remembering becomes less important. And my ability to construct an argument doesn’t have to disappear if a reasonable argument can be generated before I’ve even worked through it.
This leads me to a concept I think of as Subtractive Innovation. That’s when innovation increases the capability of the human-machine system while reducing the necessity for the human to exercise the capability being augmented. And I think the word necessity is critical here as I’m not arguing that using AI inevitably makes us cognitively weaker. Human beings have been offloading cognitive tasks onto tools for thousands of years, and many of those tools have made us smarter and more capable. AI may do the same on a scale we have never seen before.
So, here’s what concerns me. Human abilities tend to have a “use-it-or-lose-it” quality. When we don’t need to do something, we generally do it less. And if we do it less, I think it’s reasonable to wonder what happens to the underlying capability over time. I don’t think we know the answer yet, but the pathway is certainly worth paying attention to.
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