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 exploring the intersection of creativity and technology with more intention. I’m replacing more of my downtime with this, and that direction is coming together nicely.
An article by Abi Awomosu recently put me on a train of thought: important questions about AI are not at the forefront of discussion. The debate is generally extreme—either apocalyptic or techno-solutionist. Both are valid, but large humanistic concerns in the middle need exploring, centered around how AI will change... well... us. I’m working on a research proposal to address this, which I’ll introduce here.
My questions for the near future start with cognitive offloading—outsourcing parts of our mental processes to external tools. The result is losing internal capability, something documented to happen quickly with LLM use, and something I have felt keenly when using AI to organize thoughts.
"This cognitive offloading from human to AI is especially risky for novice learners who are building foundational knowledge and skills... [they] create 'false mastery' with potentially long-term consequences... The unstructured use of AI risks even wider equity divides, as students lacking metacognitive skills are more susceptible to harmful offloading." — Australian Policy Observatory (APO) Report on Educational Offloading (2026)
"While students frequently claim Generative AI enhances their critical thinking, recent research warns of skill atrophy and metacognitive laziness... Approximately half of the cohort believes AI acts as an intellectual partner, but they actually fall into an efficiency trap, bypassing foundational learning and abandoning metacognitive self-regulation. We define this state as Epistemic Confinement, where students experience an illusion of competence, feeling as though they are thinking independently while operating entirely within AI-constructed analytical boundaries." — Dr. Winn Wing-Yiu Chow, et al., University of Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education (2025)
Interestingly, I don’t believe specific mental processes need protecting just because they are “innate.” Human babies are neurologically underdeveloped, leading to experience-dependent plasticity; things we assume are natural could just be requirements of the age. Socrates feared writing would affect memory; the calculator externalized basic maths, but we do more with it now. 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.
What concerns me about cognitive offloading is not losing this environmental wiring. Change is constant. The issue is giving huge power to private entities with their own interests and agendas.
It’s obvious with Google search; it returns results that maximize its revenue. We still have the agency of choice, essentially just skipping a research step. But LLMs take it to a new level by outsourcing logic and information synthesis. We save time, but there’s a lot of iceberg under the water in terms of assumed ideologies. Capitalism is fine to a point, but I wouldn’t let a company take over my mental processes. Companies will throw duty of care out the window for a few bucks—just look at how the YouTube algorithm can convince an otherwise mildly curious person their boss is an alien. We are already placing too much trust in digital processes and outsourcing our opinions.
And the above only relates to generative AI. Soon, we’ll have agentic AI. Instead of just a tool, it will act as a partner requiring complete access to our lives to run things, coach us, and infer our desires. It will still be owned by private entities. As companies and nations scramble to implement AGI and ASI, we will offload internal processes in massive chunks, leaving us in completely unknown territory.
"AI agents will become the primary way we interact with computers in the future. They will be able to understand our needs and preferences, and proactively help us with tasks and decision making." — Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft)
At this point, you’re probably thinking: Exception bias much? Don’t you build AI tools? Yes. I’m actually building a ‘Brain’ for myself—a second-brain tool to externalize my research and projects. I can add media or text and have them automatically summarized. It has basic Gemini AI built in to help with link building, and I can chat with entries for quick info access. (Try it) . You’ll need a local file, best in Chrome).
Am I scared of this AI future? I’m cautious as fuck. But as someone with less cognitive power for synthesizing information than the people around him, I am so keen for AI systems that can help control the mess in my head. My early experiments writing with AI were tantalizing but frustrating. They made my thoughts clearer, but not in my voice—which was unacceptable. I realized I’d been waiting my whole life for AI, but have to work out how to use it to add to my process, not stymie my potential. So I’m experimenting and trying to be conscious of what I’m giving up. Yes, this is hypocritical and muddy as hell.
Because of this messiness, I want to inject intentionality into our use of these powerful potentials. We have to work out exactly what internal processes we need to retain to manage the automation. This requires design. Future education won’t just react to economic demands; it must proactively support important cognitive processes—which we currently don’t even know.
That might sound authoritarian. We’ll need to avoid a future where such things are dictated. But because of our plasticity, we are designed by our environment regardless. We need to know what we want to be and what we don’t want to become because the stakes are higher now.
So many questions need asking, and assumed ideological positions unpacked. I hope to explore this using design fictions and futures techniques like backcasting. Ultimately, I want to make something practical to contribute to human flourishing—because letting the market decide our cognitive future just 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.