On Literature and Teaching

  Resisting cognitive outsourcing with literature Although there has not yet been enough time to know for certain, an increasing number of scientific studies on the effects of GenAi (like Chatgpt) on the brain are beginning to appear, and one term keeps coming back: Cognitive outsourcing . What that means is simply that the cognitive effort required for certain tasks is delegated to the machine: you outsource your thinking, so to speak. 'So to speak' because ‘Thinking’ really needs to be better defined: the vaguer your terms, the vaguer your thinking with and from them. ‘Thinking’ involves not only the logical tools necessary in analysing, drawing conclusion, making connections: it’s also to do with your desire to use such tools, your dispositions towards implementing thinking skills to understand the world. In that sense, when it comes to GenAI use, Cognitive Outsourcing really means leaving all those aspects of thinking to the machine. The problem is what those scientific...