Cognitive Sovereignty

By the third stage, the syndrome is fully manifested. The person has abandoned their own cognitive sovereignty: the capacity for independent judgment and the ability to develop and defend ideas without outsourcing core thinking. They can no longer distinguish between what they think and what the machine has generated for them.[...]They have reorganized their mental life around the capabilities of the machine.

Marvin Starominski-Uehara: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2026/3/genai-and-creeping-cognitive-displacement-syndrome

This is the first time I have come across the phrase "cognitive sovereignty". The idea that people may be suffering from a self-inflicted Creeping Cognitive Displacement Syndrome is a worrying one. The evidence provided here is anecdotal - but it is offered by a practicing teacher who describes what he has observed in students:

The most disturbing cases of this cognitive hollowing that I have encountered involve students who are aware of their dependence on AI tools yet feel unable to stop relying on them. They describe the experience of trying to write without AI assistance as physically uncomfortable, cognitively exhausting, and emotionally intolerable. One student shared that they feel "stupid" when they try to draft text themselves, as though their own thinking is inadequate compared to the fluency of the machine.

In my own working life, I have several times heard professional acquaintances say something like "I only use AI to create a quick draft, so I don't have to start from scratch. Then I take it from there, rewriting and editing. It's my own work.". When I hear this, it sounds a little self-delusional to me. It's a pretence that the process of editing is where the real "value" is added. Editing is important - sure - but if it were primary, then we would recognise and celebrate editors more than authors.

For what it's worth, I'm actively trying to protect my cognitive sovereignty, by practicing Generative AI Vegetarianism.