AI can make us more capable while asking us to think less.

The real shift may begin when thinking simply isn't necessary anymore.

What happens when the easier choice is to let the machine do it?

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........

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