AI is eroding hard-won skills the way cockpit automation eroded pilots’ instincts. Aviation’s answer wasn’t to ban the autopilot. It was to build a place to put novices back on the controls.
Roughly 2,400 years ago, Socrates warned that a dangerous new technology would hollow out the human mind. In Plato’s Phaedrus, he tells the story of the Egyptian god Theuth, who presents writing to the king as a gift that will make people wiser. The king doesn’t agree. Writing, he replies, will do the opposite: People will stop exercising their memory because they’ll trust the marks on the page instead. They will have the appearance of wisdom without the reality of being wise.
AI is eroding hard-won skills the way cockpit automation eroded pilots’ instincts. Aviation’s answer wasn’t to ban the autopilot. It was to build a place to put novices back on the controls.
Roughly 2,400 years ago, Socrates warned that a dangerous new technology would hollow out the human mind. In Plato’s Phaedrus, he tells the story of the Egyptian god Theuth, who presents writing to the king as a gift that will make people wiser. The king doesn’t agree. Writing, he replies, will do the opposite: People will stop exercising their memory because they’ll trust the marks on the page instead. They will have the appearance of wisdom without the reality of being wise. Tech
