The cognitive new deal

What we trade

Every technology is an exchange. An intellectual operation is moved outside of us¹1Cognitive offloadingDelegating a mental task to an external tool.In the glossary: we gain what the tool does, and we pay with the exercise we no longer do. With generative AI, the price we pay includes the act of reasoning and writing. We gain time, quality and reach; we borrow skills. At the same time, we pay a cognitive tax²2Cognitive taxThe cost paid at the moment of delegation.In the glossary. It starts with checking the AI output. Depending on our use, this cognitive tax extends to our attention and understanding, which goes hand in hand with greater cognitive fatigue³3Brain fryFatigue from supervising AI beyond your capacity.In the glossary. Over time, this can reach learning itself⁴4Cognitive debtJudgment eroding when task and responsibility both go to AI.In the glossary. This cognitive new deal is neither better nor worse. It is different, and it has several possible points of balance. When nobody negotiates, we pay the default price, the one the interface has set.

The fine print

The fine print includes trade-offs nobody planned for: we delegate more than we think⁵5Delegation driftHanding over cognitive work a little at a time, without ever deciding to.In the glossary, the tool gets things wrong without flagging it⁶6The jagged frontierThe invisible line between what AI does well and badly.In the glossary, unchecked work passes to whoever receives it⁷7WorkslopA polished AI-generated piece that wrongly gives the impression of a job well done.In the glossary and saying you used AI can cost as much as hiding it. These costs are real. They are not inevitable. Most cognitive trade-offs, individual and collective alike, depend on how the tool is used. So the price of this new deal is not take-it-or-leave-it: it can be negotiated and configured.

A collective deal

This cognitive new deal also has a collective dimension: without a shared agreement on what gets delegated, there is no psychological safety, and without psychological safety there is less trust, because nobody dares to say “I used AI for this” or “I didn't understand what it produced”. At the same time, early studies show⁸8Ramp, data note on heavy AI adopters and hiring. that companies that use AI the most are hiring more. The collective cognitive new deal can be a winning one.

An older agreement

In practice, this deal is a new chapter in an older agreement between us and our technologies. Writing, printing and then search engines each moved an operation of the mind away from us, with a set of gains and trade-offs. For each chapter, asking whether the technology was making us stupid was the wrong question; what matters is what we exchange with each use.

Signing your own deal

Signing your own deal takes two decisions: what you keep, and where the time saved goes. As the perceived capabilities of AI tools advance, the question is less what we can delegate to AI and more what we should choose to keep. The Joy Of Not Automating (JONA)⁹9Joy Of Not Automating (or JONA)Keeping a task for yourself, even when AI could do it, because it is part of your professional signature.In the glossary goes to the core of our agency: what do I want to keep for myself? Not because AI couldn't do the task or even the whole project, but because it is my professional craft, my signature. The second decision concerns the time saved, and it has two paths¹⁰10Automation versus augmentationAI as substitute for work, or as extension of it.In the glossary. Automating, meaning doing what we already did faster, frees up time. Augmenting, meaning doing what we could not do until now, lets us invest that time in projects that were out of reach.

Four framing questions

I reason that a cognitive new deal is favourable when it makes you more capable, not just faster, and when nobody else pays the price. I suggest four questions to identify the terms of a cognitive new deal:

• Do I know what I am exchanging?
• Is it a win-win, for me and for the people I work with?
• How do we grow our professional value, individually and collectively?
• Does the time saved augment this work or does it automate it?

The cognitive new deal is a paradigm, not an academic finding. It draws on studies from different disciplines, cited in the soon-to-be-published essay, and it will be revised when they change.