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Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender
What it is
A Wharton working paper by Steven D Shaw and Gideon Nave, written 11 January 2026 and posted to SSRN on 2 February 2026. It proposes "Tri-System Theory" — adding a "System 3" (thinking done outside your head by a machine) to Kahneman's fast/slow account — and names "cognitive surrender": taking an AI's answer with barely a glance. Across three preregistered experiments (1,372 people, 9,593 trials) the researchers secretly varied whether the AI was right. People consulted it on more than half of questions; accuracy rose about 25 percentage points when the AI was right and fell about 15 when it was wrong, and confidence went up either way — even after errors. Time pressure, cash incentives and feedback all moved baseline scores but never removed the pattern.
Why I recommend it
Free to read and free to download the full 58-page PDF — no account needed. Two honest flags. It is a working paper: posted by the authors, and the SSRN version has not been through journal peer review, so treat the numbers as a strong first result rather than settled fact. And the copyright line says all rights reserved — read and cite it, do not republish the text. The finding worth carrying around is the one about confidence: people felt surer of themselves after the AI led them wrong. That is exactly why the checks on our AI Basics page are worth doing out loud.
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Added Sep 23, 2026 · 0 opens