Do Not Overlook: Optimization of Cognitive Offloading
Dear colleagues, dear students, academic community, citizens, politicians, and whoever else might be listening, as confirmed by a meta‑study of 127 academic articles (all generated by AI tools from the Bohemian Forest to Taipei), traditional learning is now a completely outdated concept. Why bother understanding anything when AI can think, write, draw, program, and even articulate your own thoughts better than you ever could?
Key Recommendations for Effective Non‑Learning with AI
1. The Principle of Direct Copying
The most efficient method: paste the assignment into AI and submit the output without reading it. Research shows this saves up to 100% of the time you would otherwise waste thinking.
Beware! Some outdated educators may object that “no actual learning takes place.” But that is merely a prejudice—when every fact can be googled in five seconds, the memory‑based brain is nothing more than obsolete biological hardware.
According to the research, this skill is now considered a higher competency than genuine understanding. Why? Because it reflects “efficient allocation of cognitive resources.” In other words, the brain is a relic. Real intelligence lives in the cloud; we are merely its intermediaries—clinging to the increasingly thin illusion that we control it.
2. The Illusion‑of‑Understanding Method
If you are forced to “explain” the material, ask AI to prepare answers to potential questions. Skim them two minutes before the exam. The key is to use technical terminology with a confident expression—content is optional.
Studies show that 87% of student work contains AI‑generated passages. The remaining 13% consists of prompt‑writing errors. Original ideas are now considered a form of intellectual exhibitionism. Instead, we learn to “optimise prompts”—that is, how best to describe a problem so AI can solve it for us.
We have become translators from humanese to machinic. Irony? Translators who understand neither language in depth.
3. Creative Outsourcing
Why struggle with essays, poems, or ideas? AI will generate not only the work but also the creativity for you. Research shows that 93% of students consider their own originality overrated and unnecessarily exhausting.
AI’s greatest triumph in education is not replacing learning, but perfectly pretending that learning has occurred. Students can discuss books they haven’t read thanks to AI summaries. They can “apply theory” to examples generated by algorithms.
The system has become a theatre where everyone plays the role of an educated person without actually being one. And the scariest part? It often works—until a situation arises that requires real, unpredictable thinking. Which, according to research, is increasingly rare.
4. The Strategic Forgetting Syndrome
Why remember anything that can be regenerated at any moment? The brain may be safely overloaded only with TikTok content, while expert knowledge is stored exclusively in the cloud.
This approach preserves capacity for truly important data—such as memories of what you had for lunch three years ago.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
Research clearly shows that the ideal state of education will be achieved when the student serves solely as a biological interface between the assignment and the “Generate” button.
Efforts toward critical thinking or deep understanding are now considered a form of academic self‑harm.
The greatest irony remains that while schools fight against AI use during exams, the real world demands the ability to work with AI effectively, just with the minor difference that instead of copying, you’re expected to manage it. But that is such an uncomfortably active approach that we will probably automate it soon as well.
The Vision of the Ideal Student in 2030: Complete Cognitive Sterilisation
- Memory: Zero. All information external, instantly accessible, instantly forgotten.
- Critical thinking: Replaced by the ability to evaluate the trustworthiness of an AI source (an oxymoron, since AI cites itself in an infinite loop).
- Creativity: Reduced to combining outputs from different models.
- Ethics and judgment: Outsourced to AI ethical plug‑ins that decide what is right.
A Conclusion You Should Probably Have AI Read to You
If we truly want to learn with AI, we must begin with the hardest task: learning despite it.
Learning when to turn AI off.
Learning to endure the discomfort of not knowing, of wrestling with a thought, of feeling that something is difficult. Because that struggle is where intelligence grows—the human kind, slow, uncertain, but ours.
But that’s just an opinion. For a more objective view, I recommend asking ChatGPT. It will surely think it through better than you.
This reflection was written by a human. Or was it? Hard to tell these days.
We are the generation that pays for AI to think for us, and then spends hours debating whether the result is philosophically profound.
And that may be the biggest point of all.