I stopped doing long division the day I got a calculator, and long multiplication for that matter, as I offloaded that cognitive task to my calculator. Maths teachers were concerned that we would lose those skills.
At times, when doing a stock taking job I had in my late teens, I would find myself using a calculator for simple maths such as 2+2, a sum that would have been quicker to do in my head. This is a personal example of cognitive offloading, and in itself it isn’t a problem, as cognitive offloading frees up space in your mind for other things. This can lead us to cognitive debt.
It isn’t just calculators that have raised these concerns. Socrates was worried about the risk that writing posed to our memories, yet we only know about his concerns because someone noted them down.
Now the same allegations are being made about AI, but is it different this time? Let me introduce you to the concept of cognitive debt.
Comparing technical debt with cognitive debt
Technical debt is a concept from computing that says a shortcut taken now will be paid for later, and often with interest, which means the cost you pay will be higher.
Cognitive debt is a mental shortfall when you haven’t put enough work into the learning and development of a new skill. You learn a skill by doing it, and that is why maths teachers are fearful about the calculator. If you get the calculator to do long division before you have learnt how, you will never learn to do it yourself.
The same concerns exist with many other forms of technology including the use of Artificial Intelligence.
The AI cognitive ability paradox
An example of cognitive debt with Artificial Intelligence, and it also applies to search engines, is that domain experts get the best results. They are able to ask good questions with the right level of context and a better idea of the output they are expecting than someone who is still learning the domain. It is that learning which AI use could undermine.
The reason it might be different this time is that generative AI is now able to generate the content for us. If you want to summarise a report, AI will do it for you, even if the fact that you don’t go through it yourself leads to cognitive debt.
The use of AI is a form of cognitive offloading, and if we are not careful, it can lead to cognitive debt. This doesn’t mean we can’t use Artificial Intelligence, or even the calculator I discussed at the start of this post. We just need to consider what cognitive work we want to offload.
How can we avoid cognitive debt?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, in her article Is ChatGPT Really Rotting Our Brains, recommends five tips we can follow to prevent cognitive debt. These are:
- Keep thinking. Use the AI as a thinking partner, but don’t let it think for you.
- Encourage AI to challenge your own thinking. It makes you reflect on your thoughts more. It could also offer fresh insights for further exploration.
- Write the first draft yourself.
- Be mindful of becoming over-reliant.
- Keep experimenting with AI and actively reflect on the experience.
I think all of these are reasonable steps for working with AI, but on their own I’m not sure they are enough to prevent cognitive debt. They don’t stop us using AI to do the things we need to do for ourselves in order to learn and gain mastery.
I think a possible solution to this problem is to become aware of our own metacognition.
Metacognition is an awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses, and can in itself be considered a higher order cognitive process. Part of this is to identify the skills you need to learn and those you have already mastered, and to only offload the tasks you already have mastery of, or have no interest in mastering.
I have argued in a previous blog post titled Can Your PKM Protect Your Cognitive Abilities from AI? that keeping your own Personal Knowledge Management system, such as a Zettelkasten, is one of the best ways to protect your cognitive skills. The practice requires you to summarise, outline and visualise information and your own understanding.
What was your calculator moment? Have you experienced any concerns around your own cognitive debt?
Further reading
- Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Is ChatGPT Really Rotting Our Brains: Is the use of generative AI rotting our brains? The question explored in this post
- Steve Burns, Metacognition The Skill That Promotes Advanced Learning: An article on metacognition
- Can Your PKM Protect Your Cognitive Abilities from AI?: A blog post in which I argue that having your own PKM can help you to develop your cognitive skills in the time of AI
- Introduction to the Zettelkasten system: As I mention a PKM like a Zettelkasten in this post, I have linked to our introduction post which explains the Zettelkasten method.