Ruxandra Teslo: AI's most neglected safety risk is humans surrendering thinking
clarejtbirch · x · 2026-09-20
In a Substack essay and follow-up thread, Ruxandra Teslo argues the most neglected AI safety risk isn't robot takeover but humanity's gradual surrender of thinking.
- Unlike calculators, which relieve a narrow operation we already understand, AI increasingly takes over the very mental activities through which understanding develops
- As humans are outpaced in cognitive labour, incentives to maintain institutions that strengthen our minds will fade: where will purpose come from, how will taste mature, how will people recognize bad advice or unworthy goals
- She calls separating 'agency' from thinking a radical form of the old educational error of teaching critical thinking without knowledge
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