Resisting cognitive outsourcing with literature

 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 studies are beginning to suggest: there are consequences to doing that.

Some of them looked at the creative abilities and diversity[1], some at the homogenizing effect of GenAI on language and thinking [2], and some on looked at engagement with a task and cognitive outsourcing[3].

 Of course, all new technologies introduce a chasm, and sometimes a Kuhnian Paradigm shift, when there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’; but surely there’s a world of difference between a Revolution bringing machines to do physical work and a Revolution bringing machines to do the thinking work. Surely no-one will argue that those types of work are equivalent: using a machine to weave fabrics more quickly and efficiently is just increasing the output of a repetitive, semi-skilled and mechanical task. Using a machine to think for you is denying what makes you human in the first place: the ability to infer, connect, hypothesize, generalize, question, expand, put two and two together, imagine what would happen if two and two made five, create, imagine, invent.

 I’m quite willing to outsource the making of something I cannot make myself, or the repairing of a specific object which I cannot repair myself – after all, there are so many thousands of highly specialized skills in the world, how could I be expected to master them all? We’ve not been able to do so since the late middle ages and the expansion of cities (and the hyper-specialisation that came with that), we’re unlikely to do it now.

But I am NOT willing to outsource something which defines me as a human being, something which is inherent in me like in absolutely everyone else. Because that is the thing: fixing a computer, solving a murder case, building a bridge, paving a road – these are specialized activities shared by a few.

Thinking, connecting, asking questions, being open-minded, exercising curiosity, trying to know and understand: these are universal traits shared by each and everyone of us at birth.

We do not get born knowing how to play chess, how to make one’s bed or cross a road; but we do come to life with an amazing instrument all of our own, that took millions of years to develop into what it is now: the brain. That instrument is made for thinking, knowing and developing faculties only humans have: they are the basic building blocks of humanity, they define us and differentiate us from all other animals, however developed or fascinating some may be. The brain, our brain, is our gateway to freedom of choice: we can make decisions independently of our instincts, we can learn a ton of things in no time, we can come to speak different languages, cross cultures and create for the sake of creation or even the sake of beauty.

So the question is: what of all this if we outsource it to a machine? How long until we find out that yes, there is a decrease in creativity and originality? Let’s not forget the statistical nature of those machines, and the consequences in terms of recycling what has been done: transforming the old into a new version of the old is not creating the new. How long until we find out that our ability to connect events or ideas, our ability to deduct, our ability to think further, has been impaired? (and don’t get me started on creativity, originality and the thorny problem of the Arts in AI-times: just Google ‘Spotify and AI’ if you don’t know).

WHAT CAN WE DO THEN?

So that is precisely where fiction must come in: as a rampart, a defensive structure against cognitive outsourcing. Fiction can play an important part in putting those skills and dispositions to the fore by requiring that readers make connections, infer information, draw conclusions, imagine other possibilities, look at others in different ways, and suspend judgement until they’re better informed. All things that can easily get lost when AI does the work for you. A fallacy here I think is to imagine that reacting to something is the same as creating it: that’s been at the forefront of AI supporters’ discourse lately, who argue that there’s as much value in critiquing a text as in writing it yourself. Well, I can certainly react – and critique – a Matisse painting, but I can equally certainly not paint one myself. I can critique a world-renowned jazz pianist in terms of touch, ideas, originality, while being completely incapable of achieving anything like what they do.

The same is true – to some extent at least – when reading fiction (and selecting texts for class) of the opposition between ‘being exposed to difference’ and ‘think from the point of view of that difference’, or ‘stepping in different shoes’. One of the great powers of discussing fiction in class is that, far from simply showing differences, you can stimulate the ‘stepping in different shoes’: not just showing this time, not just telling either: doing.

And indeed, at some stage, the only way for anyone to be sure they can actually DO something is…to do it. And if they can’t, they can practice. And if the world screams at them from all corners: GO AND USE AI, then we, teachers, educators (and parents) have the power to exercise those very human skills through texts, through discussions around texts, through our questioning of characters and motives and events. Through using fiction in class – not as assignments which often don't even require reading the book, nor as an injunction never respected: but through elbow grease, through practice, through hands-on engagement with texts, ideas and perspectives - with the world.

 

 

I'm Vincent Hernot - born and bred in St Malo, Brittany, France, educated there and in Rennes, then in Ireland and in Normandy, pushed it up to a PhD in Irish things (Linguistics and Political Science), before moving to the Netherlands at the tail-end of my 20s. Found a job, then another, and finally stuck at it at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (University of Applied Sciences) where I've mostly been teaching all things Linguistics and a whole lot of Literature (at Bachelor and Master level). The one constant since my early teens has been reading - reading, reading, reading :) (and playing music, so that's two constants)

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