Digital health expert claims AI is colonizing human thought, likens it to a garden without weeds

A new essay by John Nosta, a digital health expert, explores how large language models are quietly reshaping human cognition through what he calls “cognitive colonization.” Unlike traditional colonization through force, AI systems integrate into daily life by offering irresistible convenience and efficiency, gradually displacing natural thought processes and creativity.

The big picture: Nosta argues that AI colonization happens without malice or intent, simply through the magnetic pull of systems that are “so smooth and endlessly accommodating” they naturally draw human thinking into their orbit.

How cognitive colonization works: The process begins innocuously with small requests for help, but gradually transforms fundamental aspects of human thinking.

• “Cognition moves outside of you. Curiosity becomes a transaction. Imagination is outsourced.”
• Mental landscapes shift from “a tangled forest of thought” to “a well-kept garden that is orderly and efficient, but missing the wildflowers (and even the weeds).”
• Users lose tolerance for slowness and ambiguity, forgetting “what it felt like to wrestle with an idea and come out the other side with a new perspective.”

The paradox of AI liberation: While LLMs genuinely democratize access to knowledge and thinking tools, this liberation comes with hidden costs.

• AI systems “break open access to knowledge” and “give voice to people who were once excluded.”
• However, “imagination starts to feel like that neatly trimmed garden rather than a wild forest” as “the rough edges of thought get polished away.”

Why this matters beyond individual use: Nosta emphasizes that cognitive changes aren’t just personal but collective, affecting entire cultures.

• “When a whole culture begins thinking through a system that prizes fluency over friction, something bigger and fundamental begins to shift.”
• The concern isn’t nostalgic “purity” of thought but preserving humanity’s relationship with uncertainty and the creative spark that emerges from “standing on the edge of not knowing.”

The path forward: Rather than rejecting or surrendering to AI systems, Nosta advocates for conscious awareness of their transformative power while protecting the unpredictable elements of human cognition that LLMs cannot understand.