AI, Human Cognition and Knowledge Collapse

Daron Acemoglu, Dingwen Kong and Asuman Ozdaglar model a paradox in which accurate agentic AI improves individual decisions while reducing the human learning effort that replenishes society's shared knowledge. In their framework, AI recommendations can substitute for the private experimentation and public spillovers that create general knowledge, producing a lower-knowledge equilibrium under specified assumptions.

The paper finds that stronger mechanisms for pooling human-generated knowledge can improve welfare and resilience. It is a theoretical model, not evidence that knowledge collapse is already occurring, and its results depend on assumptions about behavior and knowledge spillovers. AI may also serve as a tutor or collaborator that increases learning, while competition, open source and institutional design remain only partly represented.