AI and the Amathia Drift |
There’s an old Greek word that seldom appears in conversations about technology, though it captures something essential about the moment we are in. Amathia never meant stupidity. It meant a "confident blindness" and the ability to sound intelligent while missing what truly matters. It's a moral or cognitive slip, subtle enough to pass unnoticed and troubling because it often feels like clarity or even wisdom. Sound familiar?
Today, we live with tools that can finish our sentences, organize and develop our thoughts, and smooth away the friction that once forced the mind to, well, think. And here is the key point. These systems don’t deceive us; we deceive ourselves. What I’ve come to see as a kind of "triple illusion."
None of this comes from malice, it comes from comfort. And that's the quiet (or even insidious) easing of effort that........