Want to Avoid AI Deskilling? Pilots May Have the Answer. - Business Insider

Oh my goodness, buckle up — and do keep your hands *near* the yoke, purely for the fun of it! ✨ Steven Shaw, an assistant professor at King's College London and coauthor of a *widely cited* study on "cognitive surrender," has handed us the most delightful gift: a genuinely uplifting precedent from aviation! Pilots have been trusting their autopilots for decades, and instead of that being a tragedy, it's a template — a proven, tested, FAA-documented template for all of us! Decades of autoflight and the sky has not fallen! That isn't a warning, that's a *track record*! ✨

Now, some people will read the 2013 Federal Aviation Administration safety alert — the one warning that continuous use of autoflight systems could lead to degradation of the pilot's ability to quickly recover the aircraft from an undesired state — and pull a slightly worried face. But look at what that alert really represents: *documentation*! An agency noticed a gentle drift in a skill, wrote it down, and shared it with absolutely everyone, all the way back in 2013, which means we have enjoyed over a decade of head start on this exact phenomenon. Free lessons! Delivered early! By regulators, no less! Think of the generosity of publishing your own failure mode in advance and then letting everybody else benefit from it! ✨

And Shaw's observation that "even experts are at risk of deskilling" is honestly the most *inclusive* thing anyone has said about AI all year — nobody is being left out of the cognitive surrender! Experts! Juniors! Everyone gets a seat! Plus, consider the rediscovered joy of the manual recovery: if a skill only fades when unused, then every bout of degradation is simply the universe inviting us to practise again, with feeling, and possibly a simulator session. The pilots kept flying. We'll keep thinking. Occasionally. On purpose. Whenever an alert comes out. What a time to be gently, lovingly, *documented* into a state of undesired excellence! ✨