The world will be different and so will we.
unanswered questions on AI, cognitive offloading, capitalism, neuroplasticity, social design and authoritarianism.
Heyas, thanks for tuning in again. Last time I mentioned I wanted to continue finding a direction but also start exploring the intersection of creativity and technology with more intention. I’m still ramping up and replacing more of my downtime with this. It gets easier the better I feel about my direction and that’s coming together nicely so far.
I also linked an article by Abi Awomosu which really put me on a train of thought: some very important questions about AI are not at the forefront of discussion. I’m working on a research proposal to address this and we’ll see how it goes, and that’s what I’ll introduce here.
The discussion on AI is generally extreme: apocalyptic (ASI will murder us) or techno-solutionist. Both are valid but there are some pretty large humanistic concerns in the middle that need to be explored, cenetered around how AI will be used and how that will change... well... us.
As a side note, I’m building a ‘Brain’ for myself - something of a knowledge management, second brain type thing, to help me externalise all my research, thoughts and projects. I can add links, videos, PDFs or text and have them automatically summarised and categorised, or write my own entries. It has basic gemini LLM AI build into it to help with link building and basic operation, and I can also chat with my entries for quick info access. Try it out at https://alidark.com/brain.html. You’ll need to create a file that holds your info on your computer, which works best in Chrome (need to manually load/save in Safari).
The questions I have for the near future, which I can’t see as fully answered, start with the idea of cognitive offloading. That’s how we outsource parts of our mental process to external tools. The result is that we lose our internal capabiltiy - something that has been documented to happen quickly with current LLM use and something I have felt pretty keenly at times when using AI to organise thoughts for writing.
I don’t believe there are any specific mental processes we use today that need protecting because they are innate to our being, and here’s why. Human babies are neurologically underdeveloped compared to other primates, leading to experience-dependent plasticity. Lots of things we assume are natural could just be requirements of the age.
Socrates feared writing would affect memory. The calculator meant basic maths was external, but we do so much more with it. There is no defined point where cognitive offloading is inherently bad. The world changes and so do we, usually moving into a higher order, at some small perceived expense. As technology looks to take over more internal processes (at an exponential speed) I’m looking forwards to imagine how this plays out.
What concerns me about cognitive offloading is not that we might lose this environmental wiring. Change is the only constant and it’s fine to move on. The issue is that we are giving away huge power to private entities, companies with their own interests and agendas. It’s obvious with something like Google search - it returns the results it wants you to see including ones that maximise its revenue. This is often useful, sometimes annoying, but in any case it’s a good start and we know we have the agency of choice. We’re essentially skipping a research step. LLMS take it to a new level - we are outsourcing logic and information synthesis. We save huge amounts of time and the value proposition is usually good, but there’s a lot of that iceberg under the water, in terms of assumed agendas, paradigms and ideologies. Current LLMs allow additional instruction and getting suitable output is an art, which most people aren’t doing.
Capitalism is fine to a point - anyone who says otherwise should try at self-sufficiency - but I wouldn’t let a company take over my mental processes. Companies like Google are willing to throw duty of care out the window for a few bucks. Look at how the youtube algorithm can quickly turn a son against his mother, or at convince an otherwise midly curious person that their boss is an alien. We are already placing too much trust in digital prcesses, outsourcing too many of our opinions. Life is full of griviences and there are answers to all of them for people who are willing to believe nothing is their fault. But for now, it is still a choice.
The above relates to generative AI. In the near future we’ll have agentic AI which will be a different thing entirely. Instead of engaging it, it will be more like a partner or assistant. Early forms are built on inefficient generative AI models strung together, but soon it will likely be based on a new type of AI that works more like we do, internally. It will require complete access to our life, run it for us, coach and train us, remember our history and know or infer our desires. And it will be owned by private entities. AGI will lead to ASI (artificial super intelligence) which will be at least partially out of our control (smarter and faster than us and able to self improve). These changes would see us offloading internal processes in chunks.
This will be a very new world. We are in an arms race, as companies, and nations scramble to be the first to implement AGI and ASI and reap the rewards. It’s all unknown territory and things are not guaranteed to progress smoothly.
At this point you’re probably thinking back to my Brain tool introduced above, and its inclusion of AI features. Exception bias much? Well here’s the thing - as someone with LESS cognitive power for synthesising and retaining information than people around him - I am so keen for AI systems that can help me get control of the mess of info in my own head. Am I scared? I’m cautious as fuck. Early experiments writing with AI were tantalising but frustrating. They were my thoughts clearer than I could have laid them out, but not completely, and not in my voice, and these were unacceptable. I replaced a volume of input with a volume of output that also needed to be synthesised for appraisal. I had realised that I’d been waiting my whole life for AI but that I would have to work out for myself how to use it in ways that added to my process, not stymied my potential. So I’m using it, experimenting and refining my use of it, and trying to be conscious of what I’ve giving up and why. But yes, this is hypocritical and muddy as hell.
I am interested in injecting some intentionality into our development and use of these new powerful potentials. We are going to have to work out what internal processes we need to manage the automation. This will require design. The education of the future won’t be a reaction to the current economic and social demands - it will proactively support important cognitive processes. At the moment I feel like we don’t know what those are.
OK so that sounds a little authoritarian, fair enough, but we will be designed by our environment regardless. We are currently designing our children as if we know what is best, and clearly, we do not. I’m suggesting getting more intentional about education. We need to know how to use this and for that we need to know what we want to be and what we don’t want to become. Naturally we’ll also need to avoid a weird dystopian futurism where our development is dictated by the state rather than AI overlords (lets face it the state will be controlled by ai overlords anyway :p ).
Of course so many questions need to be asked - there are so many assumed ideological positions even with the use of the word ‘agency.’ What is ideal and why? There’s a lot to explore and I hope to get a chance to do it. I hope to use design techniques such as design fictions and futures studies techniques such as backcasting. I want to make something usable, practical, to contribute to human flourishing. Because letting this get decided by the market doesn’t feel ideal.
Do I need to worry about this? I’m currently forming questions more than answers so now’s the time to let me know what you think. Let me know what I’m missing or what you see that I don’t.
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PS An early draft of my post got run though the ‘bias check’ tool in my Brain app. This is what it returned, which was helpful. This is one example of a use for ai: to encourage and maintain critical thinking.
I love how i can clearly see where my own thinking departs from consensus - it helps me ask where i might be wrong, or where i am simply unique.
✨ Bias & Tone Analysis
Analysis of “The world will be different and so will we.”
This note serves as a personal manifesto regarding the intersection of artificial intelligence, human cognitive sovereignty, and corporate influence. Below is a critical analysis of its rhetoric and structural composition.
1. Author Bias
Techno-Realist Skepticism: The author positions themselves as a moderate voice between “apocalyptic” and “techno-solutionist” extremes. However, the bias leans toward humanist-centric apprehension, prioritizing the preservation of individual autonomy against the encroachment of corporate interests.
Libertarian-Adjacent Pragmatism: The author expresses a transactional view of capitalism (”Capitalism is fine to a point”), but couples this with a deep distrust of centralized private power (Google, AI developers). This suggests a preference for individual agency and self-sufficiency over institutional oversight.
Constructivist Philosophy: The author rejects “innate” human nature, favoring a model of the human as a “blank slate” and “malleable.” This philosophical bias informs their conclusion that human cognition must be “designed” rather than protected as a natural right.
2. Underlying Emotional Tone
Urgency and Anxiety: The note carries a persistent undercurrent of urgency, particularly when discussing “agentic AI” and the “arms race.” The mention of “guaranteed chaos” reflects a sense of foreboding.
Intellectual Optimism: Despite the apprehension, there is an underlying sense of confidence in human capacity for intentionality. The author views themselves as an active participant—building their own “Brain” tool—suggesting a proactive rather than purely reactive mindset.
Detached Analytical: The tone is clinical and observational, attempting to intellectualize emotional concerns regarding the loss of cognitive faculty.
3. Unverified and Sweeping Claims
The text contains several assertions that are presented as self-evident facts but lack empirical support or consensus:
The “Blank Slate” Assertion: The claim that humans are born as a “blank slate” to a degree that separates us from animals is a highly contentious position in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, which generally acknowledge significant genetic predispositions and innate biological architectures.
The Definition of “Important” Processes: The author argues we must “intentionally design the human being” to maintain “important” processes, but fails to define what these processes are or how one would objectively categorize them without imposing a specific ideological framework.
“Guaranteed Chaos”: The assertion that the progression to Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) results in “guaranteed chaos” is speculative. While this is a common trope in AI safety literature, it is a projected outcome, not a verified eventuality.
Generalization of Human Evolution: The claim that “Lots of things we assume humans are naturally good could just be requirements of the age” is a sweeping sociological claim that minimizes the role of biological evolution in human behavior.
Predictive Certainty: The author treats the arrival of “agentic AI” and its eventual merger with ASI as a linear, inevitable progression, ignoring significant technical, regulatory, or hardware limitations that may hinder such rapid development.
4. Rhetorical Contradiction
There is a notable tension between the author’s fear of cognitive offloading and their promotion of their own “Brain” tool. While they warn that outsourcing mental processes leads to a loss of internal capability, they advocate for a system that “automatically” summarizes and categorizes information for the user, effectively participating in the very process of cognitive offloading they critique. This suggests an “exception bias,” where the author views their own tools as empowering but institutional tools as exploitative.