The Moment the Server Room Goes Dark

Short summary

The essay argues that AI delegation creates real "cognitive debt" — MIT research shows weaker brain connectivity in LLM-assisted writers, and frequent AI users show lower critical thinking. But rather than simply warning against AI, the author proposes we should learn AI's form of thinking: how it decomposes problems and weighs hypotheses. This meta-skill outlasts both absorbed knowledge and collaboration regimes, surviving even if the servers go dark.

• •MIT research shows AI delegation creates measurable cognitive debt
• •Offloading is not new — writing and calculators caused similar shifts
• •The real value is learning AI's problem-decomposition thinking, not just its outputs

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.