Cognitive offloading occurs when we delegate mental tasks to external tools. It is something that we as humans have been doing for a VERY long time. The earliest examples are from about 35,000BCE where notches were cut into bones, potentially as a lunar tracker, and we have come a long way since then.
Today of course we have calculators, calendars, maps, AI assistants and much more. Old people will recant tales of life before all these various tools, but in short, we humans have a natural built-in desire to not have to work things out if we can help it. If we can ‘offload’ a task to another device then it frees up our mental resources for other things, and it works really well.
And of course, here comes the ‘however’; however, when we rely excessively on these tools, we branch away from cognitive offloading into cognitive laziness. Is it laziness? Our brains will take shortcuts at every opportunity, so to get a proper answer to this question, we need to split the topic in two.
Is there any benefit to me to remember traffic routes to and from a new destination? No, not really, I can tell the car where I need to go, and it will find the best route, avoid traffic semi-successfully, and typically get me to where I need to be, on time, and without physical harm.
Now let’s change the ask. I want my Gen AI tool to analyse a whole set of data for me. I now have options. I can just ask the AI tool to analyse the data for me and give me a report on it and any outliers. I will typically get a response that fits the bill at a high level, and I have expended little to no mental energy. (Keep that point in mind.) The second way to approach it is to use my ‘little grey cells’ to plan what I need the tool to do for me. What do I want to know from this data? What date range do I want it to use? Do I want outliers excluded before the analysis is done? All this information and more needs to be considered before whacking out a prompt and handing off the output as job done.
In cases where there is a potentially large time saving, we will need to exercise deep engagement with the information as well as using the tool. Understanding the data before asking questions will help avoid having to perform the task repeatedly. When the output is returned, we need to engage with it once more. Does it look and feel right? Was it the kind of output or pattern you were expecting? Is it completely left field and you have no idea what on earth has happened? If you are validating the output, good on you. If you aren’t, then we have a problem.
When you repeatedly offload your cognitive processes to an external tool, you get out of practice at performing that task. This is where we see signs of cognitive decline, the more your cognitive abilities decline, the more you will become reliant on the technology to do the work for you, and guess what? Your skills decline further.
Businesses wanting to use AI, need to educate, coach and train their employees, at ALL levels of the business, on how to avoid falling into this trap. If you have employees that are not deeply engaged with the data or processes they work with, they run the risk of becoming subservient to the AI, exposing the company to hidden costs and potentially, operational risk.
Businesses will need people who know where to offload and where not to. You might think that this is referred to as common sense, but sadly not. This ‘efficiency trap’ results in teams becoming vulnerable to technology failures and losing their capacity for innovation. We need to balance the use of the technology in such a way as not to lose the abilities that have made us so successful (open to debate) as a species.
Practice mental resistance, perform a task mentally before turning straight to a digital tool. It will help keep your cognitive muscles stretched and slow the decline into the offloading trap.
