The Things You Used to Know by Heart
What leaning on AI to remember for you quietly does to your own thinking. The Quiet Part is a short series on what living alongside AI quietly does to you. The others in the series are You Reach Before You Think , on judgement, and It Will Never Think Less of You , on being known. You used to know your closest friend's phone number without reaching for it. You read a good book last month, cover…
Living alongside AI affects how we think, according to the series The Quiet Part. The series includes You Reach Before You Think, on judgement, and It Will Never Think Less of You, on being known. You used to remember your closest friend's phone number without reaching for it. You read a book last month, cover to cover, and if someone asked you what the book argued, you would need to look it up.
The information hasn't disappeared, it simply left your ready recall. The number is stored in your phone, while the book's argument is one question away from a machine. This loss is difficult to describe, as nothing is missing, but something is. Knowing something and merely having the ability to find it are different. When you ask the machine about the book's argument, it provides a coherent account instantly.
Previously, searching returned documents that required your own thinking. The machine can provide the thinking already done. A thing you know shapes your thoughts before you even think about it. It is present when you meet the world, deciding what you notice and what questions arise. A thing you can look up waits until you already know to ask for it.
A known thing is already present before you seek it, quietly shaping your thought while it forms. The machine can connect ideas brilliantly once you provide the two pieces and the hunch that they belong together. However, it cannot be the place where the original idea first appears, unbidden, because you happened to possess both halves.
The machine can answer anything you present it with, and connect whatever you give it. It cannot, however, be already in you, shaping your perceptions before you realize there's a question to ask. Having two facts together can allow them to meet before you consciously link them. What remains with you is the machine's ownership of phone numbers.
Most looked-up information was never intended to shape a thought, and it belongs where it is. But there are other types of information - the shape of a problem you're struggling with, the way something you love functions, or the argument of a book that changed your mind. Their purpose is to be already in you, uninvited, when a new situation presents itself, and a piece of information you can call upon is never quite the same, no matter how close you keep it.
As AI becomes more accessible, the valuable thing becomes what you've deeply internalized, something the world can still remind you of.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
