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WorldCulture9 days ago

Cognition for Sale

The article discusses how AI is transforming tacit human knowledge into a product that can be extracted, priced, and distributed at scale. It highlights both the potential of AI to democratize cognitive labor and the risk that it may undermine the human capacities essential to complex societies.

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Jun 12, 2026

Sami Mahroum

AI is doing what no previous technology could, turning tacit human knowledge into a product that can be extracted, priced, and distributed at scale. Yet the same technology that democratizes cognitive labor may also weaken the human capacities on which complex societies depend.

DUBAI—In his seminal 1956 paper “ The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two ,” American psychologist George Miller made a deceptively simple argument: our working memory can hold only seven pieces of information at once. In effect, Miller identified a hard constraint on the human mind’s processing capacity, showing that short-term cognition operates within surprisingly narrow limits.

Read the full article at Project Syndicate →
Source document: labs.la.utexas.edu

1 reports

Project SyndicateIndependentCenter9 days ago
Cognition for Sale

The article discusses how AI is transforming tacit human knowledge into a product that can be extracted, priced, and distributed at scale. It highlights both the potential of AI to democratize cognitive labor and the risk that it may undermine the human capacities essential to complex societies.

Bias read (Center): The article presents a balanced discussion of AI's dual impact without taking a clear ideological stance. It acknowledges both the benefits of democratizing cognitive labor and the risks to human capacities, avoiding loaded language or one-sided emphasis.