A New Wharton Study on AI Warns of a Growing Problem: Cognitive Surrender

> A new study by researchers at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) introduces the concept of “cognitive surrender,” our tendency to adopt AI outputs with “minimal scrutiny,” overriding “both intuition and deliberation.” I’ve read it, and the findings, although unsurprising, are still quite scary. > > The paper is called “Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender,” and it extends Daniel Kahneman’s system 1 (intuitive thinking) / system 2 (deliberative thinking) framework by adding system 3: artificial cognition. That’s the thinking that happens outside your brain when you use AI. (Although the authors use ChatGPT with GPT-4o for the experiments, they extend the concept of system 3 beyond advanced generative AI tools.)