Pylimitics

In a study just published in CHI 2025, researchers found “reductions in cognitive effort and confidence” among “knowledge workers” who made use of AI. Now, this is real research and definitely worth further investigation. But also what they found was self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence. In other words, they just did a survey and got 319 responses.

It put me in mind of Phaedrus, the dialog written by Plato well over two thousand years ago. In the dialog, Socrates is a character, and tells the story of the Egyptian god Thoth, who gave the gift of writing to the Egyptian king Thamos (who for some reason is also called Ammon; don’t ask me). The dialog is basically a channel for Plato to present Socrates’ views, and at least in this particular case, Socrates seems to come out against the idea of writing, because writing would reduce people’s cognitive effort and confidence.

I dunno; maybe writing was one of the first steps onto a slippery slope that we’re still descending. But we know that story at all because Plato wrote it down, so there’s that.