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I Worry I Am Getting Dumber by Using AI
Cognitive offloading has always been part of how humans work. But not all offloading is equal.
Some time ago, I needed to write a moderately complex regex without any tools available; laptop was offline, I was on a train. I sat there longer than I should have. I know regex. I have written thousands of them. But my first instinct was to reach for the AI, and when I couldn’t, I felt slower than I expected to be.
That bothered me for a few days. I started wondering how much of my capability is real and how much is borrowed from whatever model I happen to have access to.
What Cognitive Offloading Actually Means
Cognitive offloading is when you use external tools or systems to handle cognitive work you would otherwise do mentally. We do it constantly. You write a shopping list instead of memorizing it. You use GPS instead of building a mental map of the city. You use a calculator instead of doing arithmetic by hand.
The question is not whether offloading is good or bad. It is always context-dependent. The question is: what happens to the underlying skill when you stop exercising it?
Research on GPS use suggests that people who rely on navigation apps develop weaker…
