A major theme of my critique of our time is that technology is making us dumber. Yes! It can be called cognitive offloading. Here is one way of explaining.

As a review published in March concluded: “Although laboratory studies have demonstrated that cognitive offloading has benefits for task performance, it is not without costs.” It’s handy, for example, to be able to rely on your brain to remember the grocery list in case it gets lost. So how much cognitive offloading is good for us — and how is AI accelerating those costs?

This concept is not new: The Greek philosopher Socrates was afraid that the invention of writing would make humans dumber because we wouldn’t exercise our memory as much. He famously never wrote anything down, though his student, Plato, did. Some argue Socrates was right and the trend is escalating: with each major technological advancement, we increasingly rely on tools outside of ourselves to perform tasks we once accomplished in-house. Many people may not perform routine calculations in their head anymore due to the invention of the calculator, and most people use a GPS instead of pulling out a physical map or going off physical markers to guide them to their destination.

-Elizabeth Hlavinka in Salon.com