Babyfication: How AI Could Re-Form Our Cognitive Landscape

We tend to view technological advancement as a liberating force. Over time, tools improve, societies become more equitable, and individuals live better lives. As technology alleviates physical labour, we are free to engage more intellectually, and our lives are enhanced as a result. But what if technological progression is actually causing cognitive regression - a transition that, while subtle, is disconnecting us from the challenges of life? 

This article explores a phenomenon I call Babyfication - a playful term, but potentially a serious reality. Technology’s assistance may not just be making us lazier - it might also be rewiring us to rely on comforts, limiting our ability to function independently. Furthermore, while this could be seen as a byproduct of our reliance on technology, it may represent a necessary step in a longer journey; one that upgrades society at the expense of individual agency.

The Great Softening

Humans have evolved against a backdrop of hardship. For millennia, evolution sharpened our minds in response to life’s difficulties: hunger, threat, weather, and conflict. But every technological advancement erodes our ability to tackle the world unaided. Philosopher Marshall McLuhan described this as an amputating effect, as the creation of tools severs our connection with the skills needed before their invention. Thinkers like Paul Watzlawick have observed that, particularly in systems, many solutions carry within them the potential for future problems. I think this could be true in the system of society; each time we offload a task to machines, we are receiving a dent in our physical or cognitive armour.  

From fire to the wheel, to mass production and the internet - every step forward has made life easier, more convenient, and increasingly efficient. But these advances haven't removed difficulties from our lives; they’ve only distanced us from them. So much so that the skills and resilience required to survive without technology are now all but lost. The result is a population less able, less adaptive, and less self-sufficient than before.

That isn’t to say technology is a bad thing. It has boosted survival, enhanced wellbeing and removed hardship from many areas of life. Literacy rates have skyrocketed, clean running water has become the norm, and life expectancy has risen sharply because of technological advances. But we cannot ignore this process has also led to a general softening of the human experience. And while few would want to return to a time before technology, it’s important to reflect on the impact it can have on our bodies and minds. Importantly, by reducing our resilience, technology may also be weakening the foundations of our individual contentment.

A Cultural Shaping of Fragility

Parallel to technology's impact on reducing resilience are evolving societal ideals – chiefly those that have recast comfort as a human right. It has become an expectation that even work, traditionally an activity where we trade effort for compensation, should be physically comfortable. Meanwhile, society has shifted towards shielding people from offence to maintain their emotional comfort. From the cradle to the grave, we are increasingly protected from the natural discomforts of life, rendering us unable to experience and endure them as we once did. In doing so, we've built systems that prioritise emotional safety over psychological growth, limiting our diet of experiences in the process. Support networks, welfare states, personalised content feeds and instant answers all serve to uphold high comfort levels for the individual.

This is set alongside the belief that happiness is something owed to us; a state we should continually work towards. But happiness doesn’t work like that, and seeking to standardise it as a baseline emotion can only ever flatten its impact. Positive emotions are recognised when we are also exposed to discomfort and unhappiness. Experiencing negative feelings helps calibrate our emotional barometer to recognise true happiness. 

Importantly, discomfort, ambiguity, and difficulty are core ingredients of resilience. When we avoid negative experiences, we remove the conditions required for hardiness to emerge, scrambling our understanding of contentment in the process. By creating a system that seeks to eliminate life’s difficulties, we are inadvertently introducing psychological fragility by design.

The Automation of Thought

Having automated manual labour and processes, we have now begun automating thought itself. Because we have come to expect technological marvels, this hasn’t shaken society as much as it should. But it’s important to consider the significance of automating thinking, as our experience of life itself is an interconnected web of thoughts. 

In effect, AI is doing for cognition what machines have done for our muscles - removing effort to make life more comfortable. And while this can alleviate mental strain, the impact on our minds could be substantial. The presence of AI means we now don’t even need to ideate or reflect without computers bearing the load. 

This can be seen as breaching a significant technological barrier; the last doorway towards a completely automated existence. We entered an entirely new landscape the moment it became possible to outsource cognition- one that could fundamentally change what it means to be human.

Babyfication Defined

I don’t use the term Babyfication to describe a descent into helplessness or a state of stupidity. Instead, I see it as a shift into perpetual dependency - a kind of extended psychological childhood where our needs are continually met, and most cognitive demands are outsourced to computers. While this kind of dependency is concerning, it’s important to highlight why AI will come to dominate thought-based tasks in the first place. Chiefly, it enables us to bridge most of our cognitive weaknesses (something I discussed at length in Pollyfilla for the Mind: The Best Use of LLMs). And this is no small thing; the individual benefits of AI supercharging our thinking are hard to ignore.

But for each of us, such intervention is likely to result in a loss of resilience, a diminishing tolerance for ambiguity, and an increased reliance on external assistance with whatever life throws at us. This is Babyfication in action – a regression into childlike needs and expectations.

A Species-level Upgrade 

This shift becomes even more profound when considered at a societal level. Although speculative, it’s hard not to view the transfer of thinking from humans to machines as a species-level upgrade; a coordination between biology and silicon that enhances the potential of humanity at scale. AI, as with any tool, is a self-extension. Only now it’s a systemic enhancement that helps us bypass cognitive limitations. By upgrading thought in this way, AI fortifies our combined capability, greatly increasing what our species can achieve. And while it will inevitably infantilise us on a personal level, the machine of humanity is improved as a result.

Humanity as the Catalyst

Human arrogance means we often consider ourselves to be at the pinnacle of intelligence. Such views have been the mainstay of theological and societal teachings for thousands of years. From a biological perspective, this could well be true. But in terms of intelligence - measured in raw cognitive power – it’s becoming increasingly difficult to support this claim. The capabilities of AI demonstrate that we are likely not at the summit of intellect; maybe just a few hundred feet above base camp. AI's creation suggests that biology may only have needed to take us far enough to develop the tools necessary to reach the peak. 

Although impossible to evidence, it could be that once evolution outputs creatures with a high enough level of cognitive sophistication, they begin to self-extend through technology. First, through an individual's ability to create tools, then through society's effort to build machines, and finally, through a global development of simulated minds. If this is the case, then our early use of flint was just the opening scene in a much longer movie - a story of intelligence that could see humanity extend far beyond the constraints of biology.

Viewing Humanity as a Superorganism

To understand this perspective, it’s important to consider that humanity could be a cooperative system – a type of superorganism. Framing our species in this way is not new - thinkers from Howard Bloom to Teilhard de Chardin have explored how humanity might operate as a singular organism. 

I think it helps to picture humans like ants in a colony; many individuals with the broader overarching goals of survival and progression. While ants exist in single colonies, our cognitive abilities have enabled us to collaborate across nations to further our species. And while each person has a degree of agency, our collective might has enabled us to progress collectively, evolving in unison to reach the technologies we have today. But what distances us from all other animals is our potential to collaborate at scale, a force that has led us to invent and surround ourselves with a web of technology. Futurist Kevin Kelly has even coined a term for this - Technium - and suggests technology exists alongside us as an almost self-sustaining organism in its own right.

Viewing our species as an interconnected network of minds and technology indicates we may have always been heading to this point. Not over decades, but across thousands of years. It also casts doubt on the notion that AI is a sudden and negative force, framing it instead as a key milestone in our journey; the next logical step in upgrading our potential as a superorganism.

Cared For or Controlled?

Our relationship with AI seems to be mirroring the human life cycle. After all, we gave birth to AI, and are nurturing it towards succeeding us cognitively. AI can already retain, access and synthesise much more information than any human ever could. It is also an expert in many areas, making it capable of discussing, exploring and ideating at a higher level than most people. As its capabilities grow and its flaws ebb away, it is plausible that AI will become the trusted decision-maker for both individuals and society. At that point, humanity becomes like an ageing parent, lacking the capacity to navigate a complex world without assistance from its offspring.  

There are those who fear this transition; entrusting external minds to oversee our affairs is a daunting prospect. But when viewed as an inevitable stage on a longer journey, we can find comfort in what I see as a deterministic future. And while some may come to view AI as our captor if this happens, it's important to remember that it can only ever be an extension of us – an abstracted amalgamation of human intellect. As a system born from our own cognition, I think it is far more likely to become our caretaker than oppressor.

What We Lose

There is something deeply human about struggle - it has always built us and shaped us. Challenges give us pride, worth and strength. But as the systems around us become more intelligent, more supportive and more capable, our exposure to struggle will inevitably lessen. I don't see this as something to celebrate or fear. But I do feel we must adapt how we each live our lives in order that we can cope with this transition.  

That’s because the Babyfication of humanity will result in a loss of personal agency. Furthermore, without friction, there can be no sharpening; AI is already beginning to sand the edges of our cognition. And without responsibility, there can be no reward; without challenge, there can be no sense of accomplishment. While AI will make us more comfortable, it also risks making us less fulfilled. Not because fulfilment becomes impossible, but because the natural conditions that once supported it are reduced. 

In many ways, this is the paradox of human progress - we alleviate hardship and lose purpose in the process. But this is not the removal of free will - we will never be powerless, and will always have agency, even from within the system. We have to choose agency though, and that could be a struggle that defines us in the years to come.

The Rebellion Within

Just because society is becoming softer doesn’t mean that you have to. Even though thinking is being outsourced, we don’t need to stop thinking. In fact, as we continue to create a world designed to carry us, choosing to walk could become a radical act. But what this emerging landscape requires is not passivity; turning a blind eye and allowing AI to smooth every aspect of our lives is surely the road to discontent. Instead, we must be critical about how we let AI modify our lives. This is not a call to fight against a tide that will flood the beach regardless, but to learn how to paddle in it.

Mental strength and cognitive growth will always be possible. Living alongside ambiguity, embracing complexity and choosing discomfort are options forever open to us. But choosing these paths will require effort – that thing we have been running from since we climbed down from the trees. And in the effortless world we are forging, sometimes choosing not to take the easy option may be the only way we can rebel.

Don’t Conform - Play

Regardless of the society AI creates, we will always be able to play. This means selecting activities, designing ways of living and creating our own systems that stimulate us cognitively and emotionally. Much like going to the gym tests our bodies, play can test our minds. Taking on challenges instead of offloading them to AI may become the cognitive equivalent of a physical workout in the post-thinking age. 

In a world that is steadily infantilising us, maybe play is exactly how we should fight back. Even though we will all have to exist in a system designed to remove thought, we don’t need to allow the full automation of our lives. We can each be a rebel who chooses not to conform to effortless living, curating hardship, and doing things for ourselves. 

On an individual level, society at large is an unbendable force. But from within society, we can bend ourselves. Doing so will enable us to live lives that are rich, creative, thoughtful and deliberate. We can still strengthen our minds, sharpen our ideas and forge our own meaning. Just because AI can make thinking unnecessary doesn't mean we need to integrate it into every aspect of our personal lives. 

Conclusion

Babyfication is the path of least resistance. The future will continue to infantilise us through the assistance AI can now offer. But it’s up to us as individuals to carve our own path within these changes. The emergence of AI doesn’t have to lead to passivity, but it should inspire a collective awakening to the need for critical living. Its presence has clarified our unstoppable journey towards total technological assistance, and this alone should shake us by the shoulders. If we allow the superorganism of humanity to absorb our individuality, then our agency is at risk. But if we buck against it, embracing challenges instead of fleeing them, then we can preserve what it means to be human. 

Importantly, we can always be players in this world; still able to think, grow, and shape our own stories. And perhaps, in time, those of us who resist the full extent of these changes will become something else entirely - guides, artists, or translators of meaning in a world increasingly shaped by machines. 

The future will require us to adapt to the world AI creates. And while we may soon no longer be the mind that drives the system, we can always be its beating heart.

For a deeper look into how AI might help us maintain psychological balance rather than disrupting it, read my other article - The Right Kind of Struggle: Designing AI for Human Contentment

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