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(Frank Landymore Avatar)   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore      Published  Oct 20, 2026 11:59 AM EDT           (https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=futurism.com) Add Futurism (opens Google in a new window or tab)      More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results.        (A man is shown at his computer with a blank facial expression.)   Shutterstock / Prostock-studio    Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech  (handle_newsletter_email_submission) (d1e98ef5d9) (FUTinline) (0) Email address  (Enter your email) (Please enter a valid email address)  Sign Up  Thank you!           AI tools continue to automate more parts of our lives — and in turn, we become more reliant on them. Students use ChatGPT to do their homework, programmers ask Claude to churn out code, and now regular folks are getting a taste of AI agents with the launch of Meta’s cutesy personal assistant Muse. If the trend continues, where does it lead? Some experts (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-doom-scenario-gradual-disempowerment/) who spoke to CBS News  worry that we’re on a path to slowly ceding more control to AI models until we become empty, waiting vessels for a bot’s decisions. There’s even a name for this phenomenon: “gradual disempowerment.” Its threat goes beyond job displacement, potentially affecting human cognition and agency itself. “I put gradual disempowerment on the very top of my list,” Jay Chooi, the founder and CEO of Robocurve, a public benefit corporation that evaluates the role of robots in the workplace, told CBS . “A lot of people feel very powerless, because it requires a lot of effort and a whole-of-society approach to solve it.” Jan Kulveit, a researcher at Charles University’s Center for Theoretical Studies and coauthor of the (https://gradual-disempowerment.ai) paper that coined the term gradual disempowerment, argued that it “does not need to emerge from a deliberate scheme or powergrab by AI systems.”  “In the short-term, it is being incentivized by the perceived value that AI systems can bring to economic, cultural and state functions,” he wrote in the paper. This is something many of us already picking up on. The people in our lives who ask an AI to do and plan everything (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/coworkers-becoming-meat-proxies-ai) are mocked as “meat proxies” ; some are so thoughtless as to let an AI lay out a hiking trip that (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/teenage-stranded-mountain-ai-instructions) gets them stranded on a notoriously perilous mountain . A more extreme imagining of this scenario portrays AI and robots taking over our jobs as they become a cheaper and more efficient alternative to human labor, driving companies that cling on to their human workforce out of business. It doesn’t need to be that drastic, though, to be harmful. Experts are already seeing signs of “cognitive surrender” among AI users — (https://futurism.com/future-society/mit-report-ai-cognitive-surrender-students) students especially — in which they’re effectively allowing an AI tool to supplant their own thinking. Research has linked reliance on AI tools to diminished critical thinking skills and demonstrated that AI (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/concern-grows-ai-damaging-think) leads to lower brain activity during cognitive tasks like essay writing. On a societal scale, once we get trapped in this loop, it gets harder to get out. “If people aren’t actually practicing the skills that the agents are doing for them, they lose the ability to have that skill, and so now you become reliant,” Margaret Mitchell, an AI research scientist at Hugging Face, told CBS .  “What happens when something goes wrong?” she continued. “There’s no human you can point to who can fix it. So now you’ve become fully dependent on these systems to fix themselves, and what if that’s not possible?” The decisions that AIs are being allowed to influence — or even make — are already incredibly consequential. An AI targeting system was (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/us-military-pentagon-ai-iranian-children-school-war-crimes) reportedly involved in the decision to bomb a girl’s school in Iran , killing over 150 people, the vast majority of them children. President Donald Trump was reportedly encouraged to invade Venezuela and capture its president Nicolás Maduro (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/trump-grok-venezuela) by a conversation with Elon Musk’s Grok . “A lot of people are talking about rogue AI hacking into data centers and taking over the world,” Chooi said, “but it is not in the mainstream consciousness that like AI could literally take over the world just by continuing to do what it’s supposed to do, which is automating everything.” More on AI: (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-regulation-government-ai-harm-risk) Anthropic Secretly Lobbying Government to Only Shut Down an AI Model If It’s Poised to Kill More Than 50 People    Add Futurism as a (https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=futurism.com) preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting.   (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) (Frank Landymore Avatar)   (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore   Contributing Writer    I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.  (https://bsky.app/profile/f-w-l.bsky.social)               Most Popular (https://futurism.com/category/finance) Finance   (https://futurism.com/future-society/imf-ai-bubble-world-economy) IMF Warns That AI Bubble Could Take Down the Entire World Economy   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore          (https://futurism.com/category/tesla) Tesla   (https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/elon-flying-car-empty-shell) Wait, Was Elon’s “Flying Car” Just an Empty Shell?   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore          (https://futurism.com/category/elon-musk) Elon Musk   (https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-woodchipper-children) Elon Musk’s Growing Death Toll: “What He Put Into the Woodchipper Were Children”   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore          (https://futurism.com/category/ethics) Ethics   (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/explosive-document-ai-not-what-we-think) Explosive Document Claims That AI Is Not What We Think   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore          (https://futurism.com/category/pollution) Pollution   (https://futurism.com/dog-research) New Research Finds That Dogs Are Incredibly Horrible   By (https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai) Noor Al-Sibai           (https://futurism.com/category/artificial-intelligence) Read More         More   (https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-ai-nuclear-weapons) (Experts seemed to broadly agree that it's only a matter of time until an AI will get hold of nuclear codes during a meeting last month.)     (https://futurism.com/category/artificial-intelligence) Artificial Intelligence   (https://futurism.com/the-byte/experts-ai-nuclear-weapons) Experts Warn That AI Is Getting Control of Nuclear Weapons   By (https://futurism.com/authors/victor) Victor Tangermann           (https://futurism.com/the-byte/yuval-harari-human-hack) (Yuval Harari has a stark warning: we need to start regulating AI — otherwise big companies are going to be able to hack humans.)     (https://futurism.com/category/artificial-intelligence) Artificial Intelligence   (https://futurism.com/the-byte/yuval-harari-human-hack) Expert Warns That Human Beings Are Going to Start Getting Hacked   By (https://futurism.com/authors/ttran) Tony Ho Tran           (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/coworkers-becoming-meat-proxies-ai) (A photo illustration of an office worker with a computer screen as a head.)     (https://futurism.com/category/ethics) Ethics   (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/coworkers-becoming-meat-proxies-ai) Your Coworkers Are Becoming “Meat Proxies” for AI   By (https://futurism.com/authors/victor) Victor Tangermann           (https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-atrophying-brain) (AI may soon ruin our ability to make decisions for ourselves — an outcome that would be, one expert warns, "catastrophic.")     (https://futurism.com/category/artificial-intelligence) Artificial Intelligence   (https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-atrophying-brain) AI May Be Atrophying Our Brains, Professor Warns   By (https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai) Noor Al-Sibai           (https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-deepmind-ceo-self-aware-ai) (We can now, apparently, add the CEO of the Google-owned DeepMind to the list of machine learning researchers who think AI might gain self-awareness.)     (https://futurism.com/category/google) Google   (https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-deepmind-ceo-self-aware-ai) Google DeepMind CEO Says AI May Become Self-Aware   By (https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai) Noor Al-Sibai           (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/doctor-reels-son-becomes-plumber-ai) (A red stethoscope intertwined with a wooden-handled red plunger, placed on a yellow grid-patterned background.)     (https://futurism.com/category/ethics) Ethics   (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/doctor-reels-son-becomes-plumber-ai) Doctor Reels as Son Becomes Plumber in Age of AI   By (https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore) Frank Landymore           (https://futurism.com/health-medicine/nvidia-jensen-huang-children-cognitive-minds-ai-harms) (Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers the keynote address.)     (https://futurism.com/category/mental-health) Mental Health   (https://futurism.com/health-medicine/nvidia-jensen-huang-children-cognitive-minds-ai-harms) Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says That Sacrificing Our Children’s Minds to AI Is a Price He’s Willing to Pay   By (https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins) Joe Wilkins           (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-study-anthropic-psychosis-disempowerement) (Researchers at Anthropic found that issues of "user disempowerement" among AI users are far too common, a growing trend.)     (https://futurism.com/category/anthropic) Anthropic   (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-study-anthropic-psychosis-disempowerement) New Study Examines How Often AI Psychosis Actually Happens, and the Results Are Not Good   By (https://futurism.com/authors/victor) Victor Tangermann           (https://futurism.com/category/artificial-intelligence) SEE MORE        (https://futurism.com/) (Futurism Logo)    Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech  (handle_newsletter_email_submission) (d1e98ef5d9) (FUTinline) (0) Email address  (Enter your email) (Please enter a valid email address)  Sign Up  Thank you!          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