Learning how to learn with AI: Balancing cognitive amplification and cognitive destruction

For me personally AI is an amazing cognitive amplifier: it augments my human abilities in ways that make me more productive. I say this with a personal history of solving complex problems for the better part of the past three decades. I know how to be careful about AI responses. And yet, even I love the occasional short-cut, where I trade off learning from and with AI to simply accepting the output.

Leaning on AI too much and thus trading off intellectual growth for quick results is what I call “cognitive destruction”. Students today can crank out essays with AI and get passing grades, undermining the opportunity to learn something new. Employees can handle previously complex data analysis without understanding the underlying mechanics themselves. And because we can, we will.

In my Lightning Talk, I will argue that:

• AI might not make us stupid, and that cognitive destruction is not always bad, but the way we learn new things and solve problems has changed, even without even better AI tools.
• We must learn how to learn with AI.
• Our education system must adapt to the fact that while what we learn may not change significantly, how we learn will undergo a dramatic transformation