CONCEPT
Downgrading
Center for Humane Technology's term for the systematic weakening of human capacities that engagement-optimized technology produces in the cognitive domains the technology assists.
Downgrading is the concept Raskin and Harris developed to name the systematic erosion of human cognitive capacities that engagement-optimized technology produces. The term is borrowed from software — where a downgrade is a reversion to an earlier, less capable version of a system — and the borrowing is deliberate. Technology designed for engagement systematically weakens the human capacities the tool depends on, reverting the user to a less capable version of herself in the specific domains where the tool provides assistance, while simultaneously making her more productive in the aggregate. The user produces more and can do less. She accomplishes more and understands less. She builds more and knows less about what she has built.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Social media downgraded attention spans, social cognition, and the capacity for nuanced thought. These effects are documented across hundreds of studies in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and sociology. AI tools risk a different set of downgradings operating on different cognitive capacities through different mechanisms, but producing the same fundamental outcome: the erosion