A mathematician opens up ChatGPT to check a calculation she could have easily solved in her head. An executive uses AI to draft an email he's written a hundred times before. A professor asks NoteBookLM to summarize a student paper she has the expertise to read herself.

Is there a difference between remembering information vs. remembering where to find it? Is there a difference in knowing how to do a task vs. knowing how to get it done for you?

Cognitive offloading, the act of delegating mental work to external tools, should concern anyone who values their own intelligence. When given the choice between thinking through a problem or letting technology handle it, will we choose the tool, even when we're perfectly capable of succeeding on our own?

You can't build a skill you don't practice.

Sam Gilbert noticed in his experiments something he calls "reminder bias." This is the tendency to use external memory aids even when your own memory would serve you better. Participants chose to set digital reminders for tasks they could easily remember unaided. Even when offered money to encourage people to rely on their own memory, they still couldn't overcome it.

The root appears to be metacognitive. People underestimate their own cognitive abilities. They think they'll forget, so they set a reminder. They think they can't solve the problem, so they ask AI. Over time, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. By consistently choosing the external tool, they never exercise the internal capability.

Gilbert found that these........

© Psychology Today