{"id":221784,"date":"2026-03-09T21:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/09\/its-tempting-to-offload-your-thinking-to-ai-cognitive-science-shows-why-thats-a-bad-idea\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T21:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T01:45:11","slug":"its-tempting-to-offload-your-thinking-to-ai-cognitive-science-shows-why-thats-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/09\/its-tempting-to-offload-your-thinking-to-ai-cognitive-science-shows-why-thats-a-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s tempting to offload your thinking to AI. Cognitive science shows why that\u2019s a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tempting to offload your thinking to AI. Cognitive science shows why that\u2019s a bad idea<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/its-tempting-to-offload-your-thinking-to-ai-cognitive-science-shows-why-thats-a-bad-idea-276766<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-09 21:32:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

With so many artificial intelligence (AI) products on offer now, it\u2019s increasingly tempting to offload difficult thinking tasks to chatbots, agents and other tools. <\/p>\n

As we chart this new technological terrain, more and more we\u2019re exposed to vast amounts of information and highly sophisticated software that offers to do the thinking for us. In just a few seconds, tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can draft your emails, generate a caring birthday message for a friend, or even summarise the plot of that novel you haven\u2019t gotten around to reading.<\/p>\n

Such increased offloading has raised the fear that people will become overly reliant on AI. This could have unintended consequences, such as eroding our critical thinking skills and declining our overall cognitive ability.<\/p>\n

This fear is not unfounded. Research from our lab suggests the online environment exploits our cognitive tendencies \u2013 individual differences in how we think, perceive, pay attention and remember. In turn, some people end up taking more mental shortcuts and only engaging with information superficially. Other studies have linked high AI use to increased laziness, anxiety, lower critical engagement and feelings of dependence. <\/p>\n

Yet it may be how we use AI that\u2019s the problem, rather than the fact we do it at all. Generally, relying on external sources is fine \u2013 we do this constantly. But it\u2019s important to remain in control of what we choose to offload, and why.<\/p>\n

How do we even know things?<\/h2>\n

We all constantly rely on each other\u2019s knowledge to function as a society. Doctors provide medical information, engineers are in charge of construction, financial advisers give investment tips, and so on.<\/p>\n

All this spread of expertise provides each of us with more knowledge than we can individually hold. In other words, we constantly balance offloading (letting someone else do the thinking) with scaffolding (relying on external knowledge sources to enrich our own thinking).<\/p>\n

Scaffolding…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tempting to offload your thinking to AI. Cognitive science shows why that\u2019s a bad…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/721612\/original\/file-20260303-57-nisnfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C673%2C4096%2C2048&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-221784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221786,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221784\/revisions\/221786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}