Thinking Fast, Slow—and No Longer: Cornelia Walther

Daniel Kahneman gave us the language of System 1 and System 2—thinking fast and thinking slow. System 1 is automatic, intuitive, and effortless. System 2 is deliberate, analytical, and costly. Both matter. Both are trained by experience and sharpened by use. Increasingly, studies now refer to a third mode, artificial. Sadly, that might not be the end of our cognitive decline.

 
My new article on Psychology Today looks at the dark territory that lurks beyond fast, slow, and artificial : which may be not at all. Increasingly we are getting used to delegating the cognitive act itself to our artificial assets, absorbing its output as if it were our own.

This is a description of a trajectory. Curious artificial intelligence (AI) exploration morphs into routine integration, routine integration morphs into dependency, and dependency, unchecked, gradually shades into the gradual erosion of the capacity to think, decide, and act independently. AgencyDecay, mission completed. But we can (still) do sometime about it.

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