Chapter 1: What does the 'Cognitive Grid' mean for privacy?
And we're back. Welcome to the first Saturday Conundrum of 2026. First and foremost, I'm Brian. I'm from The Daily AI Show. In case you've just never heard one of our episodes on our, or rather our Conundrum episodes, they are definitely a departure from our Monday through Friday shows, which are all live and well, frankly, all human co-hosts.
But on Saturdays, I like to do something a little bit different. we explore a new AI conundrum every Saturday. And the way it works is that I'm going to do this type of intro where it's me, yes, me, not an AI, but then quickly followed by two AI co-hosts debating, talking, discussing both sides of the conundrum.
And not because we were trying to solve the world's problems, but because conundrums are interesting. They typically do not have a clear right or wrong answer. It really depends on the person and how you, you know, take in the data and the arguments for both sides. It's more about the discussion. It's more about the future of AI in these little maybe areas that don't get a whole lot of
you know, chatter. They don't show up in the news, but they're very real and they're going to impact us either today or in the near future or, you know, perhaps in the next decade. And so this Leitz conundrum is called the analog sanctuary conundrum. And I like this idea. I got a
Inspiration for this idea earlier in the week and this idea of having basically AI free zones, like will we in the future have a demand? Will people demand that they have AI free zones? And I don't mean like a room. I mean, like maybe a whole. city block, or, you know, maybe it's a building, or I don't know, I don't really know what it is.
I don't think it goes bigger than that, necessarily, like a whole city. But the idea that people could opt in could be inside these, these sanctuaries, essentially, where AI is just simply not a part of what's going on really sort of a rollback to very analog living. Now, Look, we know people can go and live fairly remotely on islands where that's basically what we have.
But most people either don't have the opportunities to do that. Most people don't have the ability to just up and move to, you know, some place. half deserted Highland where they're not going to really run into any AI. It's certainly possible. Don't get me wrong. I know people can go live in the woods and in all sorts of different ways that they can handle this.
I'm talking about something in like an urban environment, something where people could opt in literally walking through maybe a gate, if you will, into these analog sanctuaries. But it sounds great. And that's that's the fun part about a conundrum, right? It's it's on its face. You're like, yeah, I think people, you know, I mean, if it's me, this is my opinion.
I think people should have the ability to to turn off, you know, or click out of AI. It's already so much part of our life in the last two and a half, three years. Imagine how deeply interconnected AI is going to be when it's on literally every edge device. You know, right now, the models don't always work super well and can't be on every device.
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Chapter 2: What are the potential benefits of legally protected 'Analog Sanctuaries'?
And then what I do is I will use one of those tools, one of those LLM tools to help me rate it. Then I will put it into Perplexity and use Perplexity to do really deep research. I still love Perplexity, not that the other tools are bad, but I just love its ability to cite all its sources. I just find the UI a little bit easier.
Anyway, that's what the tool I happen to use, but certainly deep research or other tools would be fine as well. And then finally, once I feel like, oh yeah, and I read through the perplexity result and I go, yeah, I like that. I feel like it's equally looking at both sides or sometimes there's issues with it, you know, jumping too far in the future and assuming things are already there.
Again, we're using AI to predict AI. So there's sometimes there's problems. And then once I'm done with that, I finally put it inside, um, notebook LM. And so now notebook LM is obviously had wide a bit of glow ups over 2025. And so we started with just having one basic audio overview.
And now on top of having infographics and data tables and flashcards and quizzes and all those things, you can also make longer or shorter audio overviews. So like I said, this particular week, I selected the long because listen to it. And I thought I really like how deep it went into both sides of this particular conundrum.
But again, I think in the future weeks, as I have typically gone, we'll use the default, which will keep us in more of that 12 to 15 minute, a little bit quicker hit. Okay, so that's a really long intro for me. But because I took two weeks off, and because this is the beginning of the new year, I thought I would just sort of reset the room a little bit, as we used to say in the
Oh, geez, the one I read out of my head, but the audio only platform that we used all through COVID and stuff like that. But anyway, resetting the room. I hope you guys had a wonderful new year wherever you are in the world listening to this. And yeah, I expect one of these Conundrum episodes every Saturday for, you know, all of 2026, just like we did in 2025. Enjoy. I think you'll like this one.
This is the Analog Sanctuary Conundrum. The door is open.
The mics are hot. And welcome back to the deep dive.
Today, we're not just exploring a concept. We are really wrestling with a dilemma that I think is going to define the future of human freedom.
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Chapter 3: How does constant AI monitoring affect human behavior?
It just sees the data. It just sees the data. The participants under that algorithmic scrutiny, they were more critical of the whole process. They performed demonstrably worse on their tasks, and they reported a significantly greater intention to actively resist the system.
That's fascinating. So the pressure of the machine actually makes people less effective.
Yes. The sheer perfection of the optimization engine becomes the source of extreme stress. It leads to a sense of profound powerlessness. The feeling that your effort is is almost secondary to the machine's prediction of your effort.
And that reduction in perceived control, that powerlessness, that moves us right into the realm of mental health costs, specifically technostrous.
Absolutely. The sources draw a very direct line from the stress of this constant AI analysis and its mandatory implementation to some severe negative mental health outcomes. When researchers measured technostrous, which is the anxiety that comes from coping with new, demanding, intrusive technologies, they found it was positively associated with clinical anxiety.
Okay, can you put that into context for us? We have this statistic right here in the sources. It says beta equals 0.342. What does that strength of relationship actually mean in plain English for, you know, the average person interacting with the grid every day?
It means that the anxiety isn't just random. It's not just a feeling. It's predictable and it's structurally linked to the saturation of technology in your life. A correlation of that magnitude where beta measures the influence of one variable on another suggests a really meaningful non-trivial impact.
So it's a real cause and effect.
It's a strong indicator for someone who works in an AI optimized warehouse or lives in a hypermonitored smart home. The technology is no longer a neutral tool. It becomes a constant source of low level chronic stress, and that contributes substantially to their overall anxiety levels. And we see a similar link to depression with a correlation of beta equals zero point three zero eight.
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