On April 29th, 2023, a silver SUV, guided by its GPS, cruised into the waters of Honokohau Harbour, Hawaii. As onlookers swarmed to retrieve the dizzied driver, the culprit became clear—it wouldn’t be the last time.
Such mishaps highlight a well-documented link between habitual GPS use and a decline in navigational memory. But they also signal a broader phenomenon—the gradual outsourcing of our thinking to machines.
This handover is proving consequential in ways both fascinating and fraught. From GPS dulling our sense of direction to Google’s digital amnesia effect, modern minds are undoubtedly altered by the presence of technology. And yet, concerns over cognitive offloading are nothing new.
In ancient Greece, philosopher Plato agonised to his peers that the latest trend—writing things down—would “implant forgetfulness in their souls”.
From calendar reminders to scrambling for a calculator over basic addition, technology has continued to lighten the load of cognition, and this trajectory is only steepening.
It’s why you can’t recall friends’ birthdays, why splitting the dinner bill is such an ordeal, and why Hawaiian rental cars come with complimentary armbands.
AI is the latest disruptor on the scene, promising a near-ubiquitous effect on culture and cognition, more profound, says Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, than electricity or fire.
So what does industry’s favourite buzzword mean for us?
Naturally, there’s a lot to consider, but several developments appear inevitable.
Less prediction, more judgement.
In business and personal life, AI is already substantially improving decision quality, resulting in what economists term “a drop in the cost of prediction”.
Whether you’re forecasting sales or finding the fastest route home, predictions—using known data to generate the unknown—are key to decision-making. AI generates these predictions with extreme speed and at lowered cost, meaning time spent poring over data sets and diagnoses can be better utilised.
The bloom of AI, proponents argue, will free us up for uniquely human contributions to decision making—judgement, defining objectives, and making calls that require nuance and perspective. After all, an algorithm can tell you the fastest way home, but only you know whether you fancy the scenic route.
Yet, while some see machine prediction as a partner to human judgment, freeing up time for higher-level thinking, others caution against what we stand to lose. Entire industries or categories of labour could be erased, intellectual shortcutting may take root, and human oversight could diminish.
Ongoing class action lawsuits in the U.S., for example, allege that health insurers have used AI to assess patient needs, overriding physicians' judgments and wrongfully denying coverage.
The shifting skills hierarchy
Just as artisanship gave way to industrial engineering and clerical bookkeeping work gave way to digital expertise during the Industrial and Digital Revolutions, the AI Revolution is similarly reconfi guring the skills economy.
In addition to new, AI-related specialties, the WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicts that creativity, resilience, and analytical thinking will become the most in-demand skills as workplaces evolve over the coming years.
Black box thinking
There is, importantly, an opaque element to AI—its reasoning patterns are complex and untraceable, confronting us with the spectre of knowledge separated from understanding. As we grow increasingly reliant on nonhuman conclusions and information without explanation, we risk shelving our own critical thinking.
Mind the drift
The effects of technocultural change are easily left uninterrogated, but history shows that when we meet change with passivity, we find ourselves changed before we even realise.
If you've ever had your attention unwittingly redirected by a flashing image, or felt your opinions deepened by a curated media feed, you've already experienced this first hand.
If left unexamined, AI won’t just alter our habits—it will determine what we value, how we make decisions and what we understand. While we can always reroute a wrong turn, blindly following a system without pause might just drive us straight into the water.
At TPA, we’re exploring AI with consideration—tapping into its exciting potential to streamline the process, not replace it. That means more time and headspace for what matters: creativity, human insight, and the relationships that underpin great work. For us, it’s not about doing less—it’s about doing it better.
