Cognitive Surrender and Learned Helplessness: Navigating a World of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is, indisputably, a revolutionary technology. Like the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s, the way it stands to change how we live our daily lives will likely be just as profound. And just like with the advent of the internet, there are a host of problems we don't yet fully understand that will present themselves over the next couple of decades.

The internet allowed us to access all of the world's information with the click of a button and it has revolutionized how we approach the world. We are a more connected world, a more informed world, and, despite what a lot of people will try to tell you, a more intelligent world. The internet has been a net positive for humanity. That doesn't mean it's perfect. That doesn't mean there aren't problems, or risks we still need to learn how to mitigate. But on balance, it has been a net positive.

I think that in the long run, artificial intelligence will be too. Just like with the internet, that doesn't mean there aren't pitfalls we need to address, the way we did in the early days of the internet.

Two issues in particular are worth addressing. Neither is directly a result of artificial intelligence, but both are being amplified by it: learned helplessness and cognitive surrender.

Learned Helplessness, Amplified

Learned helplessness predates artificial intelligence by a significant margin, and it's certainly not a 21st-century problem. But it has been amplified by the technology and easy access to information, and easy access to resources generally, that define this century.

When we're used to having most, if not all, of our problems solved quickly and easily, we inherently become less gritty as people. Less willing to work for things. More likely to give up when things don't work out immediately. That's not a new impulse; human nature has been around as long as humans have. But when everything is immediately available and immediately answered, it's easy to forget what it actually means to work for something.

There's a second factor at play too: an incredibly complex world and an overabundance of information tend to be paralyzing. And plenty of industries have built entire business models on keeping you in that state.

Take medical insurance. Navigating the system around a routine procedure; figuring out what's covered, what your actual out-of-pocket cost will be, which codes and providers are "in-network," why a claim was denied and how to appeal it, is an exercise specifically engineered to exhaust you into giving up. It's not an accident that the process is confusing, it's actually the point. A system that's genuinely difficult to navigate produces the same outcome as one that's designed to be difficult to navigate: people stop fighting and just pay or just accept the denial. Multiply that dynamic across politics, finance, and plenty of other industries, and you get a steady, low-grade message, sometimes directly stated, sometime not, that you don't really have agency here. Your voice doesn't matter. Your effort doesn't matter. Just accept it.

The AI Solution?

Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, that helplessness finally has a solution. Or does it?

If you're feeling helpless, and you suddenly have access to the most intelligent machine ever created, the choice seems obvious: just use AI. Any time you hit a problem you're not sure how to process, regardless of whether it's something AI is actually designed, or even capable of, helping with, the reflex becomes to hand it over.

AI can absolutely be an antidote to helplessness. Or it can become the mechanism of surrender. Which one it is comes down almost entirely to how it's used.

If you get in the habit of reaching for AI any time a situation calls for critical thinking, you get used to outsourcing your critical thinking. You get used to outsourcing your judgment. And there's a massive difference between those two things:

• Offloading execution: drafting text, assisting research, handling the busy work
• Outsourcing thinking: letting the tool make the judgment call itself

How are you using AI?

Artificial intelligence is inarguably one of the most useful tools humanity has ever created, potentially the most useful. We probably won't know for certain for several decades. But like any tool, a large part of its value comes down to how it's applied.

So, the next time you reach for AI, ask yourself: Am I offloading tedious work that AI has genuinely made easier? Or am I outsourcing my critical thinking; my brainpower itself?

The first is using a tool the way it's meant to be used. It's the same instinct that has set humanity apart from every other species on the planet: build tools that extend our capability. The second is cognitive surrender, letting your brainpower be quietly supplanted by something that doesn't actually think.

Use AI to do your busy work. Just don't let it do your thinking.