"AI occupies a "cognitive dimension" we don't. It handles scale, speed, and breadth with a kind of casual authority that has nothing to do with human potential or limitation. And I've gone as far as calling this anti-intelligence. Yet we keep calling this relationship "augmentation," as though its magnitude naturally aligns with our computational strengths. In reality, the gains we experience are tiny adjustments within our fixed biological constraints."
"AI provides a steady "head nod" of validation, if not even (at times) a tinge of implicit condescension. It erases a good deal of the cognitive friction and makes thinking feel smoother than it is. And I sense that human motivation reacts to that ease by settling into a pleasant middle ground-fewer bumps of struggle or introspection. It's just enough improvement to feel rewarded."
"Let's fall into the dystopian rabbit hole and look, not avert our eyes. We like to believe that working with AI makes us better thinkers. The interaction feels good, ideas come together, and language improves. So far, so good. And it's easy to read that as growth. But beneath that satisfaction sits an imbalance that most people never see. AI occupies a "cognitive dimension" we don't."
AI operates in a cognitive dimension distinct from human minds, handling scale, speed, and breadth with impersonal authority. The apparent augmentation is disproportionate to human computational capacities; observed gains are marginal adjustments within fixed biological constraints rather than transformative expansion. AI's smoothing of cognitive friction provides constant validation and can reduce struggle and introspection, prompting motivation to settle into an easier middle ground. That ease risks producing enhanced mediocrity as humans become more polished versions of limited selves. The core problem arises when human self-evaluation uses AI's coordinates as the standard, obscuring human limits reflected back by an immense external system.
Read at Psychology Today
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