Cloud, AI, and Reflection: Toward a Generation That Will Outsource Its Brain?
With the explosion of Google, individuals’ cognitive behaviors have changed radically. A series of studies conducted in the 2000s, such as those by Betsy Sparrow, a psychology professor at Columbia University, revealed that the constant availability of the internet influences human memory. We no longer attempt to retain information but focus instead on knowing where and how to find it. This phenomenon, called the Google Effect, has led to a dependency on instant access to knowledge, accompanied by a decrease in deep thinking.
Right now, I wonder how this trend influences children—are they only studying for tests the night before, compared to twenty years ago?
Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, this phenomenon has reached new heights. AI is no longer just an information repository; it’s becoming an active participant in thought processes.
Cloud + AI = Information + Reflection.
So it’s a brain at your fingertips, and soon it will be as intelligent as and 10,000 times faster than top researchers at conducting meta-analyses. The goal seems to be to replicate human thought’s most unique qualities, even down to emotions.
Outsourcing these mental processes risks reducing our ability to think independently.
What will motivate people—especially students—to think for themselves in the future, when even today, critical thinking and high-quality personal reflection are in daily decline?
Critical thinking is already on the endangered list!
Consider the magnitude of this issue by reflecting on a fact from 2016: according to a study by Stanford University, 82% of young people surveyed were unable to differentiate a sponsored post from a factual article. This is Native Advertising, and you can find a post on my blog on this topic.
This loss of discernment is symptomatic of a global decline in critical thinking in a hyper-connected society where information is consumed in superficial, image-based formats. These images often contain collections of facts and advice, but lack true reasoning or connections between ideas. Combine this with other phenomena like fake news, deepfakes, myths, misconceptions, beliefs, and scientific misinterpretations that we’re already steeped in.
The problem isn’t just about access to data but how it’s presented and thus processed. And today, social media content already presents challenges because what goes viral are infographics. Despite being minimalist and often lacking in reasoning or connections between ideas, they dominate, but that’s another subject I’ll address in my next article.
What Will Motivate Reflection in the Future?
The big question is: in the future, what will drive young people and future adults to learn, attempt to retain information, cultivate critical thinking, and maintain independent thought during their education and beyond? Semantically, we’re already in the era of content creation—it’s no longer about having something meaningful to say that advances thought on a subject, or even raising thought-provoking questions or snippets of reasoning, but rather about repackaging the same content in a new format.
As human intelligence faces the risk of being overshadowed by AI, the need to preserve critical thinking might arise from two sources: education—with necessary adaptations from both parents and school curricula—and philosophy.
However, parents are often overwhelmed by issues related to digital and device usage, educational curricula lag by several years, and philosophy is only taught later in life.
And we’re only talking about a minority on a global scale.
