The internet has often been a reliable place in which to store one's knowledge of the world.

Disinformation and AI slop have drowned reliable information under a flood of false information.

Effectively accessing knowledge is less about search and more about using critical thinking.

I was an early fan of the internet. I was amazed that all the knowledge of the world was available to everyone, everywhere, all the time. With cell phones, we could carry all the knowledge of the world in our pockets.

But things have changed. The knowledge is there. But it is drowning under a flood of disinformation and AI slop. AI systems may make it harder to find reliable information.

Cognitive Offloading of Knowledge

Google that. The ability to quickly and easily access information has been the boon of the internet age. But what if you don’t have to keep as much knowledge in your own head? The internet moved even more of our knowledge to external platforms rather than our internal brains. Why hold onto knowledge when we could simply search anytime for anything, when you carry all the knowledge of the world in your pocket?

We all engage in cognitive offloading. We store our knowledge in places other than our brains. We take notes. We take pictures. We keep calendars. We keep financial records. I wrote recently about some of the benefits and risks of offloading memory to external records such as calendars, phones, and the internet.

The Risk of False Information

But one risk I didn’t mention was the reliability of information on the internet. If most of the knowledge you look up is reliable, then using the internet for storing knowledge is great. But what if the information on the........

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