Cognitive offloading.
Cognitive offloading is where we push our thinking onto someone or something else, and in the case of AI, onto AI. You don't remember phone numbers any longer? That's cognitive offloading to your phone. With AI the amount we can offload is huge, and it happens without us really noticing. Cognitive offloading is so tempting because our attention and working memory are limited and the hit of speedy and immediate performance from AI can be strong. The challenge is where our offloading is uncritical or excessive, when we're delegating much of our work, or the process of understanding and judgement as well as execution, into AI. It de-skills us. It reduces learning, as the learning is shallower. We get weaker at detecting errors. And over time we risk more homogeneous thinking, as teams using the same models may produce the same kinds of output. For problem solving or for parts of an organisation where creativity and divergent thinking are required this can be an issue. The long-term cognitive effects of generative AI are not well established, but early research suggests our brains do change with use.
In the wild
“When deciding whether to offload, we weigh factors such as our goals for the task and whether a tool might perform it better than we can. Another driver: If cognitive offloading saves us effort, it becomes particularly appealing.”
Seen here: American Psychological Association
For AI users
Consciously notice which tasks and what thinking you're handing over to AI. Offloading easy stuff like formatting is likely fine. Offloading the judgement or creative steps are ones to watch, particularly on work that's meant to be yours.
For business leaders
To benefit from AI, workplaces do need a level of cognitive offloading, but not dialled up the maximum. Identify the capabilities you want to maintain in your organisational talent, such as critical judgement, understanding of your customers, risk recognition, and professional accountability. These are the skills to preserve while removing some of the more repetitive tasks. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is helpful here despite being written prior to this wave of AI: Look to outsource "system one tasks", which are fast, automatic and low effort, and have your team maintain "system two tasks", which are slow, deliberate and effortful. It can be really tempting, for various reasons, to use AI for both types of thinking. But the risk and the damage could be very high.