The man whose company is trying to get the world to use AI for everything has named a risk he thinks almost no one is talking about: that people will let it do so much of their thinking that their own minds go slack.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, calls it “cognitive atrophy,” and puts it near the top of AI’s unresolved questions. He said it on the podcast “Invest Like the Best.”
Asked what most worried him about AI’s future, Altman replied: “One that I don’t think gets much attention is how are we going to avoid cognitive atrophy?”
His framing was less doom than discipline. “How are we going to use these tools and make sure that we are stretching our brains more and more and continuing to understand the stuff that really matters?” he asked, casting the danger as one of laziness rather than apocalypse.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!It is a striking worry coming from him. OpenAI’s whole business is persuading people to lean on ChatGPT for more of their work and their decisions, which makes its founder fretting about over-reliance a little like a confectioner warning about sugar.
