David Brooks

They like hard mental challenges.

And I think that 20% will use AI to think a lot more, and their mental and cognitive capacity and productivity will be astounding.

I think 80% of humans, I'm just guessing, don't like to think.

They're what the psychologists call cognitive misers.

So they'd rather not.

And so they can use AI to substitute for their thinking.

And some of the new research that has just come out in the last couple of days suggests that the decline in motivation to think among people who use AI is massive.

That people just do not, not only do they not want to think, they lose the capacity to think hard.

And I relate to this.

Sometimes I'm on a road trip

and I'm taking a whole bunch of turns, left turn, right turn, this exit, that highway, this highway.

And I think, I used to have to do this using a map, a paper map.

And that would, I think that's impossible.

How did I ever do that?

And I am 100% confident I am incapable of using a map to do a complicated trip today.

I've lost that ability.

And you extrapolate that out to all sorts of cognitive tasks, and what you get is a massive loss of cognitive ability.

And what you wind up with, which is a, we have a caste system in economics and education, but a caste system where you have 20% are cognitive superstars and 80% are cognitive backward, you've got problems.

I did a lot.

I said some stupid stuff, which got me in trouble.