Artificial Intelligence or Abdicated Cognition?

We have all heard the old (😉) adage that “AI Won’t Take Your Job but Someone Using AI Will”.

The reality is a little counter-intuiitve, and Sol Rashidi wrote an excellent piece that gets to the root of the issue – and it is a nuanced one.

“Stop Letting AI Do Your Thinking for You”.

I regularly try to explore and share both the opportunities and risks as well as recommendations for effective LLMs/GenAI usage, but Sol articulated it much, much better.

The term “abdicated cognition” often referred to as “cognitive surrender” or “cognitive capitulation” describes the increasing occurrence of voluntary, passive relinquishing of critical thinking, judgment, and decision-making to popular LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini et al) and their combinations into tools such as Microsoft Copilot.

This may be the real risk, and it is very easy to succumb.

Just this week I reviewed an impressively polished document and immediately assumed the apparent quality was the result of iterative refinement of deep subject matter expertise. It was only on detailed examination did I realise that, whilst voluminous, it was “content light”.

The AI equivalent of an optical illusion, a “trompe l’oeil” . . .

Impressive but less helpful than anticipated . . .

I thought I had trained myself better to identify and question generated output – seems I got lazy!

Sol Rashidi writes . . .

• “AI can write your emails. Analyze your data. Create your presentations. Generate your reports. Answer your questions.
• And the promise is simple: Let AI handle the work so you have more time for what matters.
• You can outsource tasks. You cannot outsource your critical thinking. AI was meant to amplify your expertise, not replace it. It was designed to free you up to do higher-level thinking, deeper work, more strategic decisions.
• But if you’re not careful, you’ll lose the very muscles that make you valuable.

College students are using ChatGPT to write their essays, while we use Copilot to summarise meetings and Claude to generate strategy documents.

Are we letting our curiosity and critical thinking muscles atrophy?

Sol shares four key lessons/recommendations;

1. Always question the output. When AI gives you an answer, don’t just accept it.
2. Practice discernment – Just because AI can generate an answer doesn’t mean it should. Judgement matters.
3. Keep doing the meaningful work manually. Even when AI can do it faster, do it yourself occasionally. Keep the muscle strong.
4. Apply and amplify your value – AI doesn’t have your experience, context, and wisdom.

The risk isn’t that AI will replace you. The risk is that you’ll use AI in ways that weaken what makes you valuable. That will make your job less fulfilling AND may just put it at risk!

Artificial Intelligence or Abdicated Cognition?

Help your colleagues and help your kids . . .

Stay Curious – “Certainty is a disease that is only cured by Curiosity” . . .

It’s all about BALANCE . . . 

You can read Sol Rashidi’s article “Stop Letting AI Do Your Thinking for You” here . . . . Food for thought! 

Thanks for reading . . .