AI and The Cognitive Atrophy Trap: What Happens When We Let Tech Shortcut the Hard Parts of Learning - Tobias Burkhardt (EP 28)
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Can we trust ourselves to use AI responsibly rather than just trusting the technology?
Hello, this is Eva, and you're listening to the In Between Tech and Trust Podcast. In this week's episode, I talked to Tobias Burkhard, and Tobias is founder of the Shift School. And the Shift School is a learning institution that he has built because he himself never liked school and decided to create a better one. He spends his days thinking about into what learning actually needs to become. And he also thinks about it of where AI hands you an answer before you can form a question. And so we get into why quietly outsourcing your thinking, our thinking to AI is making your cognitively capacity weaker without you even noticing, and why that is a learner's problem and not just a technology problem.
And Tobias makes a claim that is hard. hard to shake off because if you have never seriously engaged with AI and are worried it will take your job, the problem may not be technology. Welcome to the In Between Tech and Trust podcast, Tobias. I'm very happy to have you.
Yeah, great to be here. I'm uh looking forward to the conversation with you.
And the conversation circles around tech and trust. And you also work in an area that touches both of those topics, and that is learning, and that's also the topic of education. When you now think about tech and trust in particular from your experience, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Maybe that's my rebel gene. Cause the the usual response would probably be, can we trust technology? And I'm more interested in reframing the question, can we trust us to use technology? So uh I think of course trust is the workbench of transformation. That's my realm. That's where we work in in shift school. But I think we should ask the question of uh Can can we trust ourselves to use it? Can we trust our judgment? Can we discern things? Do I trust my abilities, for example? I think that's the foundation. And from there you can then go out and trust also new things, because that's what new technology is about, especially AI. When there is something new that I don't know, do I trust Trusted or not. Because established things, it's a different question and more philosophic probably, but I think that's the interesting part.
And I think trust should be more regarded as an investment into something. So I'll try it, I experiment with it, I make experiences, and then I discern, then I form my opinion about it and and know how to respond. And not waiting till You know, everything is figured out.
And we're now at a time that allows us to move from knowledge scarcity to infinite access. And so you can say that we also invest in the kind of way of how we consume information going forward and also how we consume it in a way that it's already been synthesized by AI.
How does the shift from knowledge scarcity to infinite information affect learning in the AI era?
Is there any way that you see of how this is fundamentally different? of what learning means to people, to us in particular, and also what role trust in those information play when we consume it in the educational space.
Let me put it this way. I think we we don't come from scarcity. I think I mean way back, yes, but especially now with AI, there's n things are not so much different. We have been living in an age of abundant information and content for quite some time. So I there have been millions of books, more books, more YouTube videos, more s content than we could ever consume. So it doesn't really matter if it's increasing more and more in in the regard of of scarcity. It's more about the the filtering part. So make making sense and finding things that it has become increasingly different. And I think um you have talked about the slop phenomenon on your on your podcast before. That is of course something that is interesting.
But I think it it's more about making judgment and and finding things and also be confronted with controversial things. So it's more about filtering. It's more about uh curation, for example, that is important in in education. So we on purpose look at a different opinion, uh the exact opposite opinion. And that has to be learned. It's more on a on a meta cognitive level that we need to deal with that.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Can we trust ourselves to use AI responsibly rather than just trusting the technology?
0:06–3:13
2
How does the shift from knowledge scarcity to infinite information affect learning in the AI era?
3:13–6:34
3
Why is comparing AI tools to human skills misleading and what role does intent play?
6:34–9:24
4
What is cognitive atrophy and how does outsourcing thinking to AI accelerate it?
9:24–13:04
5
What responsibilities do learning providers have given the rapid half‑life of skills?
13:04–16:41
6
Why is lifelong learning a personal obligation and how should we change our attitude toward AI?
16:41–20:14
7
Why should education focus on broad, critical‑thinking skills instead of narrow expertise?
20:14–23:48
8
What is the Lifescape Learning model and how can AI be integrated into community‑driven education?
23:48–26:28
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast
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An AI Agent on Creativity and Trust - Xiaomi, The AI Art Magazine (EP 36)
Leading When AI Outruns Expertise - Wolf Ingomar Faecks (EP 35)
Co-Opting Agentic Matter and Transcending Exotic Computing: Where Frontier Technologies Evolve - Dr. Zina Jarrahi Cinker (EP 34)
AI Governance Structures To Ensure Trust - Solo Episode (EP 33)