Goldman Sachs partner raises concerns of potential 'cognitive atrophy'
The "real danger" with using artificial intelligence is it could lead to diminishing reasoning capacity, according to a partner at Goldman Sachs, amid emerging concerns in the workplace about AI eroding important employee skills.
Chris Churchman, head of Marquee, Goldman Sachs' digital platform for institutional and corporate clients, aired this concern in the bank's podcast series, "Exchanges."
"I think there's a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us being able to reason from first principles ourselves. I think there's a real danger of that," Churchman said in the podcast.
He made the warning as he pointed out the eventual decline in some skills following the development of technology that can do better than humans in these capabilities.
"Think about like wayfinding, running hundreds of miles on the savannah and finding your way back, right? Totally lost that capability," he said. "Remembering things, like bards used to be able to recite entire books. Now you don't need to remember anymore. You just read it in a book. That was the printing press, right?"
With AI, Churchman said humans are delegating the ability of reasoning to technology.
"So I think that my North Star here is, I feel a great responsibility building products for the firm such that in 10 years time, a new joiner to the firm, their friends say to them, 'Oh my goodness you can handle that much reasoning?'"
"And so, I think that has to be a proactive choice to think about how do we empower human reasoning, not delegate it."
AI-driven skills erosion
Churchman's remarks come in the wake of growing workforce anxiety that they are losing some valuable skills in the wake of AI adoption.
A recent report from the Acceleration Community of Companies (ACC) found that two in three employees are worried that AI will erode their writing skills (66%) and creativity (66%).
More than six in 10 employees are also concerned that AI use will impact their memory (63%), social skills (60%), and life competence (66%).
"Our work suggests people are increasingly worried that relying on AI could erode the abilities they value most, fuelling anxiety about becoming too dependent on a technology they're increasingly expected to use," said Monica Chun, president of ACC.
"The onus is now on businesses to help people use AI without losing confidence in their own capabilities."
Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, a professor in the Information Science department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, previously told HRD that human resources professionals should design a process where employees will be required to challenge AI-driven output.
"You design a parallel process where you demand your employees to make decisions and challenge the decision-making of the AI system. Sometimes you need to go against the precedent if you are in unprecedented times," he told HRD.
