Outsourcing Ourselves? The Hidden Cost of Convenience
We’re not just outsourcing tasks to AI… we’re outsourcing thinking. Here’s what it’s costing us.
This article is the first of a two-part series exploring the risks of cognitive offloading to AI. Subscribe to get practical tips in part two, as well as future articles exploring how we reclaim creativity, reasoning, problem-solving and what truly makes us human in the age of AI.
I miss the rush from solving problems. You know that moment when everything clicks? When you lean back in your chair with that satisfying "I figured it out" feeling?
Now I just ask ChatGPT (or Claude, Gemini, Grok, …)
With all of these amazing new tools at our disposal, it’s hard not to turn to them with any unknown or challenging problem. It dawned on me that I have started to turn to AI almost any time I don’t have an answer or solution to a problem top of mind. The discomfort of not instantly knowing something now has a solution. But then it hit me…
When did I become someone who outsources his own thinking?
I'm not alone. We've all made this trade: intellectual satisfaction for efficiency. And we're starting to notice what we've lost. Remember when figuring something out felt energizing rather than draining? When wrestling with complexity left you accomplished, not depleted?
"Just Google it" became "Let ChatGPT handle it." Our outputs look better than ever, but something deeper is happening. We're losing touch with our own cognitive agency.
This isn't about technology being bad. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a technophile and huge proponent of AI. It's about the invisible cost of convenience.
The most important question isn't whether AI can think—it's whether we'll still want to.
The Friction Factor
Cognitive offloading is the practice of using external tools to reduce the mental workload on our brains. This concept isn’t new. Examples include:
Maps instead of memorizing routes
Notes instead of trusting memory
Calculators instead of mental math
But here's what changed: the friction disappeared.
Before, cognitive offloading required deliberate action. You had to unfold a map, pull out a calculator, look something up in a book. That pause (however brief) created natural boundaries around when and how much we offloaded.
AI eliminated that friction entirely.
The tool is always there, always instant, always seductive in its convenience. The threshold for offloading dropped to nearly zero.
I'm not troubled that AI can help us think.
I'm troubled that we may stop thinking altogether.
The Efficiency Trap
Here's the strange thing about our quest for cognitive efficiency: we're optimizing for speed while undermining the outcomes we actually want.
Faster answers ≠ better thinking ≠ more fulfillment.
Research on "desirable difficulties" by psychologist Robert Bjork shows the opposite: struggle creates stronger learning and deeper engagement. The effort isn't a bug—it's a feature.
Think about the last time you felt genuinely proud of solving a problem.
I bet it wasn't because the solution came quickly or easily. It was because you worked through complexity, wrestled with uncertainty, arrived at understanding through effort. That process (the very thing AI offers to eliminate) is where satisfaction lives.
We've created an efficiency trap: when convenience becomes cognitive quicksand.
We sink deeper into passivity with each effortless answer, mistaking productivity for progress and speed for intelligence.
The question isn't whether AI can make us more efficient. It can.
The question is whether efficiency is what we're truly after.
Your Brain on Autopilot
Your brain physically changes based on how you use it. Neural pathways that get regular use strengthen and grow. Those that don't get used weaken and are pruned away.
Use it or lose it isn't metaphor—it's neuroscience.
The Evidence is Compelling:
Navigation and GPS: A 2020 meta-analysis by Miola et al. in Neuropsychology Review analyzed studies across multiple populations and found consistent evidence that regular GPS users show reduced spatial memory and navigation ability. Brain imaging studies reveal decreased gray matter density in the hippocampus (the brain region crucial for spatial navigation) among habitual GPS users.
We're not just losing the skill to navigate without a computer. We're losing the neural infrastructure that supports it.
Mental Arithmetic: Functional MRI studies show that students who rely heavily on calculators demonstrate reduced activation in brain regions associated with number processing, particularly the intraparietal sulcus. A longitudinal study by Grabner et al. (2009) in NeuroImage found that intensive calculator use led to measurable decreases in mental math abilities and corresponding changes in brain activation patterns during arithmetic tasks.
Executive Functions: Adele Diamond's research at UBC has demonstrated through randomized controlled trials that executive functions—attention control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility—strengthen with targeted practice and weaken without it. Her 2013 review in Annual Review of Psychology emphasizes that "repeated practice is key" for cognitive gains.
Crucially, neuroplasticity works both ways: what we don't use, we lose.
If basic cognitive skills atrophy when we outsource them to technology, and AI makes cognitive offloading frictionless, what happens to the complex thinking skills that make us human?
We're conducting a massive, uncontrolled experiment on human cognition.
I'm one of the test subjects.
We all are.
Four Ways We're Losing Ourselves
When we use AI passively—as a replacement rather than a thinking partner—we face four interconnected risks:
1. Deskilling
We lose competencies we once had. Skills atrophy through disuse, and AI makes it easier than ever to stop practicing the cognitive abilities that define human intelligence.
2. Disengagement
Work becomes less intrinsically motivating. When AI handles the interesting parts (the problem-solving, the creative thinking, the intellectual challenge) we're left with mechanical tasks that drain rather than energize us.
3. Superficial Thinking
We get answers without understanding. AI can provide solutions, but it can't provide the deep comprehension that comes from working through problems ourselves. We risk becoming dependent on insights we can't recreate or truly grasp.
4. Atrophy of Curiosity
We lose our capacity to sit with questions, to wonder, to explore mystery.
Curiosity requires tolerance for not-knowing, for questions that don't have immediate answers. When we can always ask AI instead of wondering, we lose our capacity for sustained inquiry—the very capacity that drives learning, innovation, and meaning-making.
These risks compound. As we become deskilled → we become more dependent on AI → we become less engaged → our thinking becomes more superficial → our curiosity atrophies.
The cycle deepens.
What's Really at Stake
The more I researched this, the more I noticed my own cognitive shortcuts.
We're not just automating tasks; we're automating the very experiences that build our most essential human capacities.
Interpersonal Communication
When we use AI to craft our messages, we skip the mental work of thinking through how someone might receive our words. This is a thought process that builds empathy and social intelligence. AI writing may sound polished, but it reduces our communication skills and eliminates the practice of emotional attunement that comes from crafting our own words for delicate situations.
We lose the experience of considering another person's perspective, their emotional state, their likely reaction. That consideration (that mental modeling of another human being) is how we develop deeper understanding of others and stronger relationships.
Creative Expression
AI-generated content reduces our practice in developing original ideas and finding our unique voice. Using AI for creative work eliminates the productive struggle that leads to breakthrough insights and personal artistic growth. When we outsource ideation to AI, we reduce our tolerance for the uncertainty and iteration that drives true innovation.
More important, we lose the deeply personal satisfaction that comes from creating something uniquely ours.
The muscle of making unexpected connections between disparate ideas (perhaps the most distinctly human cognitive ability) atrophies when AI does the connecting for us.
Curiosity and Deep Learning
When we use AI for learning and skill development, we replace the productive struggle and discovery process that builds true expertise. The joy of intellectual curiosity gets swapped for efficient information retrieval. We lose our tolerance for not-knowing and productive discomfort—the very friction that drives genuine learning.
Curiosity requires:
Sitting with questions that don't have immediate answers
Following threads of interest without knowing where they lead
Developing our own understanding through sustained engagement with complexity
When we can always ask AI instead of wondering, we lose our capacity for the kind of sustained inquiry that leads to wisdom rather than just information.
The Real Problem
The problem isn't AI.
The problem is passivity. Treating AI like a replacement rather than a thinking partner.
I don't want to become someone who can use AI but has forgotten how to think. That's why I'm exploring what it means to work WITH artificial intelligence while staying unmistakably, irreplaceably human.
We stand at an inflection point. AI can either enhance our human capabilities or replace them. The difference lies not in the technology itself, but in how consciously we choose to engage with it.
The question isn't whether to use AI—that ship has sailed.
The question is whether we'll use it in ways that make us more human or less so.
→ In Part 2, we'll explore how to stay in the cognitive driver's seat and use AI in ways that sharpen your mind instead of dulling it.
This is the first part of a two-part series on cognitive offloading in the age of AI. In Part 2, we’ll explore specific tools for reclaiming your cognitive edge—practices that help you stay sharp, engaged, and unmistakably human while working with AI.
Know someone who may be leaning too much on AI for their thinking? Or someone who is struggling with what to use AI for and what not to?
Have you noticed yourself avoiding hard challenges and jumpy too quickly to AI? I’d love to hear your experience.
Interested in connecting on how we reclaim what makes us human in the age of AI?
I hear you. I am writing about the same concerns not just for adults but young people in our schools.
My Hope is that we Will be able to defer some of our thinking to AI in order to reach further and beyond what we usually achieve.
The AI-fueled critical thinking deficit keeps me up at night 😭 Our brain is a muscle like any other.. use it or lose it! It’s a constant balancing act to integrate AI without sacrificing good old fashioned brain thinking.