By Murray Sherriffs
Some see AI as a tool that frees up time for other activities.
Others fear that offloading our thinking to a computer will dull our capacity to think for ourselves.
University of Waterloo behavioral scientist Trent Cash says that one’s learned skills—how to work through math problems or detect polyps while performing a colonoscopy—may indeed atrophy, if taken over by AI.
He said in a piece in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that “if we offload a specific skill to AI, we’re probably not going to retain that skill.”
But emerging evidence suggests that the type of AI tool and how it’s used can make the difference in a person’s ability to hang on to or pick up skills.
AI may be most likely to weaken our skills when it replaces the mental work needed to practice that skill.
Instead, staying mentally engaged using AI feedback or examples while learning may preserve, and perhaps even enhance skills.
Cash is hard-pressed to believe that AI will bring about the doomsday scenario which some envision.