27 Oct 2026 10:47
519 — Julie Dirksen takeover: How do you stop AI doing your thinking?
Is AI making you smarter or dumber? And what is the cost of offloading even the simplest of tasks?
In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, guest host Julie Dirksen and Cammy Bean are joined by behavioral scientist Samuel Salzer to explore how to stop AI eroding our thinking.
We discuss:
- why 'cognitive surrender' is riskier than 'cognitive offloading'
- how 'automation drift' can lead to organizational rot
- how to protect your thinking
During the episode, Samuel pointed to a paper that models how reliance on AI can snowball: 'Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus'.
Samuel's new venture, Surprisal, is a community for people who want to understand AI and use it thoughtfully.
Julie's new book on skills development is Design for How People Build Skills. You can learn more about Julie's work at usablelearning.com.
For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills.
Connect with our speakers
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