“The skills you stop practicing will disappear”: Anthropogenic engineer warns of “cognitive abandonment” due to excessive AI control
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- An Anthropic engineer writes about thinking about AI coding
- We risk ‘cognitive abandonment’ if we don’t continue to focus on AI, he says
- However, the developer is not opposed to the use of AI coding agents.
The idea that our cognitive faculties may be degrading due to underutilization in the AI age is not new, but it was summed up well by Anthropic engineer Addy Osmani, who argues that we risk losing key skills by letting robots do all our digital work for us.
“Nothing in my daily life requires me to think critically now that so much of my work goes through agents,” Osmani writes (via Business Insider). He adds that “the skills you stop practicing will disappear, and probably faster than you think.”
As you might expect given his work, the software developer isn’t suggesting that AI agents shouldn’t be used in coding projects, but he is saying that it’s important to protect our critical thinking skills, despite the temptation to simply accept whatever AI offers us.
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Osmani also suggests countering the idea that it doesn’t matter if we lose the skills required for jobs that AI can improve anyway: “No matter how much AI helps, a human has to take responsibility,” he says.
Maintain human property
Some level of cognitive transfer to AI is acceptable, Osmani says, as long as humans “retain ownership.” It is when AI results are accepted without oversight and without any rigorous review that we should start to worry.
“You read the last answer well, so you skim the next one,” says Osmani. “You just scan the skeleton of whoever comes next. Then you get asked about a line and you can’t explain it, even with the help of your agent…that’s how cognitive debt accumulates.”
The engineer has some suggestions for avoiding cognitive abandonment. They include practicing basic skills, formulating ideas before asking the AI, paying attention to what is generated, and ensuring you fully understand the decisions the AI makes.
Ultimately, while some skills will be lost as AI improves, we need to be deliberate about which ones we’re willing to give up, Osmani says – and not just mindlessly let that happen. It’s worth thinking about this the next time you ask AI for help with something.
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