All idiots…

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly pervades pretty much everything, everywhere, cautionary research comes courtesy of Microsoft. Its study of knowledge workers found that generative AI tools “reduce the perceived effort of critical thinking while also encouraging over-reliance on AI”.

As Sarah O’Connor points out in the FT, this is nothing new. Way back in 1983, long before the advent of AI or indeed the internet, “Lisanne Bainbridge put her finger on the problem in a famous paper called “Ironies of Automation”. She argued that humans asked to be “‘machine-minding’ operators” would find their skills and knowledge would atrophy through lack of regular use, making it harder for them to intervene when they needed to.”

Zoom forward to today, and when one of the key players in AI flags the risks of ceding our minds to the machines, it’s not just another irony of automation – it is a major watch out. In short, unthinking overuse of AI is in danger of shrinking our brains and ultimately making us all idiots (an AI none of us wants).

Better to use the tool with greater judgement and care, and keep training and developing our brains through good old-fashioned means such as reading books, writing and making things ourselves with our own hands and hearts.