Cognitive drift and surrender

The idea, in brief

I bring together three lenses: Chiriatti and colleagues’ System 0, Shaw and Nave’s Tri-System Theory, and the intensification of work studied by Ranganathan and Ye. From this comparison I propose a phased model of cognitive drift and “qualified cognitive surrender”. I present these as speculative constructs, not already validated models.

Here I summarise the chapter’s argument. Below you will find an excerpt from my book and the references I cite there, numbered as in the bibliography.

Companion page reviewed · 17 October 2026

From the book’s companion

An excerpt from my book

Original Italian text, from the chapter opening. · 1 min

The chapter’s infographics

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References I cite in this chapter

I have gathered the references cited in this chapter, preserving the entries and numbering of my book’s bibliography. Links are included only where supplied in the book.

• [95] Parasuraman, Raja e Victor Riley. "Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse". Human Factors, 39(2), 230–253, 1997.
• [96] Parasuraman, Raja e Dietrich Manzey. "Complacency and Bias in Human Use of Automation: An Attentional Integration". Human Factors, 52(3), 381–410, 2010.
• [27] Chiriatti, Massimo, Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini, Enrico Panai, Brenda K. Wiederhold e Giuseppe Riva. "System 0: Transforming Artificial Intelligence into a Cognitive Extension". Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2025.
• [113] Shaw, Steven D. e Gideon Nave. Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender. Working paper, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2026. ↗
• [106] Ranganathan, Aruna e X. M. Ye. "AI Doesn't Reduce Work — It Intensifies It". Harvard Business Review, febbraio 2026.
• [69] Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011.
• [30] Cummings, Mary L. "Automation Bias in Intelligent Time Critical Decision Support Systems". AIAA 1st Intelligent Systems Technical Conference, 2004.
• [108] Riva, Giuseppe. The Architecture of Cognitive Amplification: Enhanced Cognitive Scaffolding as a Resolution to the Comfort-Growth Paradox in Human-AI Cognitive Integration. Working paper, 2025.
• [9] Bainbridge, Lisanne. "Ironies of Automation". Automatica, 19(6), 775–779, 1983.
• [57] Goddard, Kate, Abdul Roudsari e Jeremy C. Wyatt. "Automation Bias: A Systematic Review of Frequency, Effect Mediators, and Mitigators". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 19(1), 121–127, 2012.
• [89] Monsell, Stephen. "Task Switching". Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134–140, 2003.
• [70] Kosmyna, Nataliya, Eugene Hauptmann, Ye Tong Yuan, Jessica Situ, Xian-Hao Liao, Ashly Vivian Beresnitzky, Iris Braunstein e Pattie Maes. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872, 2025.
• [87] Mollick, Ethan. Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Portfolio/Penguin, New York, 2024.
• [41] Fischhoff, Baruch. "Debiasing". In Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic e Amos Tversky (a cura di), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, 422–444. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982.
• [71] Larrick, Richard P. "Debiasing". In Derek J. Koehler e Nigel Harvey (a cura di), Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, 316–338. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2004.

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