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Recently I was thinking about how AI is becoming very powerful and the real danger with it. I am sharing my opinions and my reflections. This is not to say that I don’t use AI but what I am trying to say is that we need to be looking at how to use AI as more and more organizations jump towards automation and incorporating AI into their businesses.
Is Job loss the biggest risk?
Some may say that the real danger with AI is job loss but what I see is that the real danger with AI is that it is making it easier for us to stop thinking and to become more dependent on it. The more dependent we become on it, the less we use our cognitive ability.
In the recent days there has been new developments in terms of how AI chatbots are becoming very powerful to such an extent that you can send a message from your phone and the AI agent can draft a letter or even organise your files in the folder.
Thinking is becoming optional
In this article, I like to talk about our cognitive ability and how it has impacted us as we become more and more reliant on AI. It is creating a dependability whereby it is no longer a great necessary for you to use your own thinking because it's faster, convenient and easier.
This is what cognitive offloading looks like
# Asking AI to summarise instead of reading
# Generating ideas instead of struggling through them
# Writing without really thinking
It’s like using GPS to travel but the effect of using GPS is that, without it, you won’t know which road to take, that’s how dependent we become on it.But over time, something changes in terms of the cognitive ability. We stop exercising the very muscles that make us sharp:
# Critical thinking
# Problem-solving
# Deep focus
# Creative thinking
Cognitive offloading to cognitive augmentation
How we need to be using AI is more towards on the cognitive augmentation. That means I don’t just copy and paste but rather I question everything that AI produces and use it with caution. You can use AI to :
- Challenge your thinking.
- Look at it from a different perspective
- Help you to think outside the box
- Become aware of your blindspots
Don’t just copy and paste!
I believe that’s where the real growth happens. You can leverage AI tools to think better, to see better solutions instead of just offloading for convenience. I believe the future won’t just reward people who use AI but rather people who think well with AI and leveraging on it.
My concern is that, as AI becomes more powerful, more people will drift towards cognitive offloading compared to cognitive augmentation and when this happens, the cognitive ability in a human being becomes weaker. It’s as similar to a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes and the less you use it, the more weaker it becomes.
Today, you have a choice on how you use AI, I encourage you to use AI in terms of cognitive augmentation compared to cognitive offloading because that will help your cognitive ability to remain strong while leveraging AI tools.
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About The Author
I help individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their full potential by helping them develop the right mindset, build stronger leaders, and become better communicators — equipped with the soft skills and NLP-based strategies needed to succeed in today’s world.
Connect on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/jobthecoach
Job Manikkam (jobthecoach@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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