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This paper identifies a significant gap in current AI safety research, which largely overlooks the risks of deskilling and addiction associated with GenAI. It highlights the discrepancy between the focus of AI safety literature (discrimination, harmful content, malicious use) and public concerns about cognitive decline and mental health due to over-reliance on AI. The authors call for AI safety research to address these overlooked cognitive and mental health concerns, suggesting information campaigns and regulation as potential mitigation strategies.
AI safety is missing a big piece of the puzzle: the deskilling and addiction risks that could erode our cognitive abilities and mental well-being.
The scope of AI safety and alignment work in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has so far mostly been limited to harms related to: (a) discrimination and hate speech, (b) harmful/inappropriate (violent, sexual, illegal) content, (c) information hazards, and (d) use cases related to malicious actors, such as cybersecurity, child abuse, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. The public conversation around AI, on the other hand, has also been focusing on threats to our cognition, mental health, and welfare at large, related to over-relying on new technologies, most recently, those related to GenAI. Examples include deskilling associated with cognitive offloading and the atrophy of critical thinking as a result of over-reliance on GenAI systems, and addiction associated with attachment and dependence on GenAI systems. Such risks are rarely addressed, if at all, in the AI safety and alignment literature. In this paper, we highlight and quantify this discrepancy and discuss some initial thoughts on how safety and alignment work could address cognitive and mental health concerns. Finally, we discuss how information campaigns and regulation can be used to mitigate such prominent risks.
