October 16, 2025 • 12 mins
Kevin Cirilli welcomes Chloe Autio to unpack how AI is reshaping the way we learn — and maybe even the way we think. In a world where students use ChatGPT to write essays faster than teachers can grade them, is curiosity dying, or just evolving? Kevin and Chloe dive into the politics of AI in classrooms, the ethics of “study buddies that never sleep,” and what happens when prompting replaces questioning. A fast, funny, and slightly terrifying look at the next generation of learners — and the future of real thought.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Is artificial intelligence making and thinking extinct, programming our minds
to think like artificial intelligence, to think like AI box
instead being able to think like humans. Hello Future, It's
me keV and this is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier.
The planet is Earth. The year is twenty twenty five.
(00:24):
My name is Kevin's a really founder of MTM dot
TVs Meet the Future platform. My guest today advises the
AI companies on all of these questions on how to
be more human or to protect human thought. Her name
is Chloe Autio. She is an adjunct Artificial Intelligence Policy Advisor.
She also is an emerging technology policy expert more than
(00:47):
a decade of experience advising leading organizations on technology policy
and governance. Chloe, thanks so much for saying hello to
the future. Is AI killing the way we think?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Kevin, Thank you so much and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's so so great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
AI, I would think, is killing the way that we think,
but the way that we are interacting with or maybe
over relying on AI, maybe making our thinking capabilities a
little bit weaker.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, so that's terrifying. You're literally just told me that
it's making our thinking capabilities weaker. How does that even compute?
I mean, if we can't think as civilizations, then we're
all just going to become zombies. Is there any good news?
I mean, I try to be an optimist about this stuff,
but if you're saying that we can't think because AI
is thinking for us, that's not good. Klo, that's not good.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It is not good. It's really not good.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And I'll be more specific, character probably more specific. What
I think a lot of people are concerned about when
we're talking about AI replacing thinking is that AI is
really diluting curiosity. So if we're treating or using AI
as a shortcut, that really eliminates the struggle around creating
or having unique original thought. The friction that happens in
(02:01):
our brains and our experiences that we're coming up with
new ideas, that is going away the more and more
that we rely on AI to produce these initial thoughts
or you know, quickly turn to chat GPT to answer
any questions that might come our way. So it's not
just the thinking that is being sort of strained perhaps
or limited by how we're over relying on AI in
(02:24):
some situations, but it's really sometimes the curiosity too, and
we really need that curiosity to support and enable that thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So there's a great article in Time magazine that just
came out. I love this article. Chat GPT maybe eroding
critical thinking skills according to a new miit study. Let's
dive into the study. The study divided fifty four subjects
eighteen to thirty nine year olds from Boston area.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Whatever your thoughts are on Boston. I'm from outside of Philly, and.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
They divided them into three groups and they ask them
to write several SAT essays using chatchipt as well as
Google and nothing at All respectively. So that's not good
if you were in the nothing at All category. I
remember when I took the SATs. I had a lot
of anxiety, but I had to remember the Boo books.
But the researchers used an EEG to record the writer's
(03:16):
brain activity across the thirty two regions of the brain,
and they found that one of the three groups, the
CHATCHYPT users this is wild folks, The CHATCHYPT.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Users and this is what Chloe's talking about, had.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The lowest brain engagement and quote. According to the study,
consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioral levels end quote.
So over the course of several months, CHATCHYPT users got
lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy and paste.
By the end of the study, Chloe, it's making us lazy.
(03:52):
It is making us lazy.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It is making us a little bit lazy. And that
is exactly what I was talking about, Kevin, with that friction,
that sort of struggle that is required, and we're coming
up with new ideas our brains and the neural networks
in our brains actually they get better. It's like working
out right. The more you strain a muscle, the stronger
it gets. Well, the more you struggle with thinking, the
(04:14):
more your cognitive development actually improves. You get smarter by
doing hard things with your brain. And so the more
that we are not doing that, the more that students,
the more that everyone is just sort of plopping over
to chat GBT or a Claude or Gemini to say, hey,
come up with this idea for this essay, or maybe
even write the essay for me. As we saw in
(04:35):
this study, the opportunity for that struggle, the opportunity for
building that muscle of curiosity and creativity in the brain
it's getting weaker.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It is really really scary it. Psych I always say,
klo it. Psych I always say, watching a marathon is
not like running a marathon. Watching my Philadelphia Eagles play
football is not me on the game. Okay, if you
want to go to the gym to stay in shape,
you got to go to the gym. You can't watch
it on televi vision. It sounds like that's really the
point that you're making.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Absolutely, there are a lot of things that we can do.
I don't want to make it all negative.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, well give it positive because quaubi. I gotta be honest.
I heard you were an optimist of Right now I'm
thinking of myself. I don't know if it's.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Just right right.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, what I'll say, Kevin is that I think that
this is just an issue that needs more attention, and
that's why I'm so focused on it. For a long
time in Washington, people were really focused on these quote
unquote existential risks from AI, and I'm sure you've heard
of some of those. These are things like AI, you know,
hijacking the nuclear codes or becoming deceptive and sort of
taking over the world. The capabilities of AI haven't quite
(05:36):
reached that level, yet in a way that will have
broad sort of material impacts. And so when people talk
about the existential risks of AI in that context, I
always try to bring them back to this conversation that
we're having right now, because this is the one that
impacts how we think, who we are, how we show
up in the world as humans. And I personally think
(05:57):
that it is more existential on an individual and societal
level than some of these sort of terminator ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So that's why I'm.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So focused on it.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm focused on it not just to be negative, but
because I think it is one of the big issues
that we need to be thinking and talking about, particularly
as AI is getting more and more integrated into children's
lives and the lives of students and professionals just sort
of everywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well, what I like about the conduestion is that what
I like about the question is that it puts you
back in the driver's seat a little bit. I mean,
it allows you to really, as a human to think, Okay,
am I thinking that? Or is the artificial intelligence telling
me to think that?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Is that me? Or is that just what I'm seeing?
And I think we as humans, I'm a millennial.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I think we sort of first got that dose with
social media, like is that really happening or is that fomo?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Or is that what I'm seeing in the reels. There
was a study earlier this.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Year by chatch Ebt and MIT and n Gadget has
a great rate up on it. But essentially these new
studies from open Ai and MIT Media Lab found generally
the more time users spend talking to chat GPT, the
lonelier they feel, which sounds like a really big idea.
But then there's part of me that's like, Okay, well,
if you want to feel less lonely, go outside into
(07:12):
the world and talk to humans, you.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
So I think that a lot of this to your point,
which I totally kind of just had an aha moment on,
is you know that if you want to be healthy,
you got to eat your fruits and vegetables, you know
what I mean. You don't have to go on some
crazy diet like we all know you should probably have
an apple a day to keep the doctor away. If
you want to feel less lonely, maybe don't have a
(07:37):
friendship with the robot.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It seems so obvious of it, and yet here we
are and this is, as you know, like one of
the big issues that many people are talking about, including
the previous serves in general. You know, wrote a big
report about loneliness, and it wasn't just about technology and
technologies impact on exacerbating loneliness, but it was really just
about how, you know, we have a lot of institutions
(08:01):
and disconnect in the world just generally, and so technology
has definitely played a role in that, but there are
other reasons why people are feeling disconnected. But I want
to come back to really important point that you made
about the parallels between AI and social media, because it
is they are really similar. A study from I think
it was Stanford and Facebook when it was still called Facebook, gosh,
(08:23):
probably almost a decade ago now showed that when people
were getting on Facebook and just scrolling the lurking, if
you will, instead of posting and interacting. Yeah, yeah, doom scrolling.
And maybe this is even pre doom scrolling, but just
like consuming the stuff that was there instead of sharing
things about their life and getting reactions from people. Even
(08:43):
though it was on social media, those people were also
more lonely, They were less altruistic, they felt less connected.
And whether we're talking about AI or social media or
just being in the world. What we know is that
if you interact with people more, you're going to be
a happier person, because connecting with humans is something that
(09:04):
we all really really need as humans. And so it's
just interesting how and I think it's important to point
out that some of these problems or these these dynamics,
these themes, they come back over and over again, whether
we're talking about social media or AI.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But that's when you're talking to these companies, when you're
advising these companies.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But are they building their product to with that in mind?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Or are they just trying to get get you hooked
on AI, get you hooked on the robots, so that
so that when you're talking to them, you just become
addicted to them, you know, you feel like you have
to use them to do your job. Or because candidly,
I think a lot of people would argue with social media,
what we saw was they were just like, we don't
you know, it's really not about you being connected to
your high school class when you give away. It's about
(09:49):
you being addicted to the.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Product, right or it began there and slowly became something
else because of the way that incentives and you know, yeah,
the structure of our sort of commercial society works, right.
I mean, there's a great Atlantic article, I think it
was in the Atlantic all about how we've really made
this transition from social networking, right, which is about connecting
(10:11):
with people, to social media, which is about consumption. And
that consumption, to your point, is exactly you know what
is sort of like pulling us out of the physical
world and more onto the online world where we're getting
sort of absorbed by and addicted to these technologies. To
address really quickly your question about you know, what companies
(10:31):
are doing, most all of these companies have really you know,
well trained social scientists who are trying to figure out
sort of how to not just optimize you know, the
user experience on the platform, but also keep people off
the platform when it becomes unhealthy. Obviously, there are some
companies that prioritize this more than others. But we're seeing,
(10:54):
i think, in a really interesting way, a new emergence
of dating apps and dating type you know companies or
dating relationship focused companies that are really really focused specifically
on how human interactions with platforms can actually improve human
interactions in person. And it's probably a whole other conversation. Yeah,
(11:17):
but there's a lot of really really interesting work and
research happening here on platforms like Mino and another one
it's called look Up. But we could definitely talk about those.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
We'll do another date.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
With artificial intelligence. We'll have that next week. Yeah, well,
we'll definitely have to do that. Chloe Autio, thank you
so much for coming on the program to really talk
about that and to talk about just how human and
how it's changing and everything.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You really helped me understand so much of that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Chloe Autio, she advises the AI companies on all of
these big questions, and she's got more than executive experience really,
I mean's She was the director of Public Policy at
Intel Corp, where she led public policy.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Development and engagement on all of these issues.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Chloe Audio adjunct Artificial Intelligence Policy Advisors.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It's called thank You
Is artificial intelligence making and thinking extinct, programming our minds
to think like artificial intelligence, to think like AI box
instead being able to think like humans. Hello Future, It's
me keV and this is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier.
The planet is Earth. The year is twenty twenty five.
(00:24):
My name is Kevin's a really founder of MTM dot
TVs Meet the Future platform. My guest today advises the
AI companies on all of these questions on how to
be more human or to protect human thought. Her name
is Chloe Autio. She is an adjunct Artificial Intelligence Policy Advisor.
She also is an emerging technology policy expert more than
(00:47):
a decade of experience advising leading organizations on technology policy
and governance. Chloe, thanks so much for saying hello to
the future. Is AI killing the way we think?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hi?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Kevin, Thank you so much and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's so so great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
AI, I would think, is killing the way that we think,
but the way that we are interacting with or maybe
over relying on AI, maybe making our thinking capabilities a
little bit weaker.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, so that's terrifying. You're literally just told me that
it's making our thinking capabilities weaker. How does that even compute?
I mean, if we can't think as civilizations, then we're
all just going to become zombies. Is there any good news?
I mean, I try to be an optimist about this stuff,
but if you're saying that we can't think because AI
is thinking for us, that's not good. Klo, that's not good.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
It is not good. It's really not good.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And I'll be more specific, character probably more specific. What
I think a lot of people are concerned about when
we're talking about AI replacing thinking is that AI is
really diluting curiosity. So if we're treating or using AI
as a shortcut, that really eliminates the struggle around creating
or having unique original thought. The friction that happens in
(02:01):
our brains and our experiences that we're coming up with
new ideas, that is going away the more and more
that we rely on AI to produce these initial thoughts
or you know, quickly turn to chat GPT to answer
any questions that might come our way. So it's not
just the thinking that is being sort of strained perhaps
or limited by how we're over relying on AI in
(02:24):
some situations, but it's really sometimes the curiosity too, and
we really need that curiosity to support and enable that thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So there's a great article in Time magazine that just
came out. I love this article. Chat GPT maybe eroding
critical thinking skills according to a new miit study. Let's
dive into the study. The study divided fifty four subjects
eighteen to thirty nine year olds from Boston area.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Whatever your thoughts are on Boston. I'm from outside of Philly, and.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
They divided them into three groups and they ask them
to write several SAT essays using chatchipt as well as
Google and nothing at All respectively. So that's not good
if you were in the nothing at All category. I
remember when I took the SATs. I had a lot
of anxiety, but I had to remember the Boo books.
But the researchers used an EEG to record the writer's
(03:16):
brain activity across the thirty two regions of the brain,
and they found that one of the three groups, the
CHATCHYPT users this is wild folks, The CHATCHYPT.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Users and this is what Chloe's talking about, had.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The lowest brain engagement and quote. According to the study,
consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioral levels end quote.
So over the course of several months, CHATCHYPT users got
lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy and paste.
By the end of the study, Chloe, it's making us lazy.
(03:52):
It is making us lazy.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
It is making us a little bit lazy. And that
is exactly what I was talking about, Kevin, with that friction,
that sort of struggle that is required, and we're coming
up with new ideas our brains and the neural networks
in our brains actually they get better. It's like working
out right. The more you strain a muscle, the stronger
it gets. Well, the more you struggle with thinking, the
(04:14):
more your cognitive development actually improves. You get smarter by
doing hard things with your brain. And so the more
that we are not doing that, the more that students,
the more that everyone is just sort of plopping over
to chat GBT or a Claude or Gemini to say, hey,
come up with this idea for this essay, or maybe
even write the essay for me. As we saw in
(04:35):
this study, the opportunity for that struggle, the opportunity for
building that muscle of curiosity and creativity in the brain
it's getting weaker.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It is really really scary it. Psych I always say,
klo it. Psych I always say, watching a marathon is
not like running a marathon. Watching my Philadelphia Eagles play
football is not me on the game. Okay, if you
want to go to the gym to stay in shape,
you got to go to the gym. You can't watch
it on televi vision. It sounds like that's really the
point that you're making.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Absolutely, there are a lot of things that we can do.
I don't want to make it all negative.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, well give it positive because quaubi. I gotta be honest.
I heard you were an optimist of Right now I'm
thinking of myself. I don't know if it's.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Just right right.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, what I'll say, Kevin is that I think that
this is just an issue that needs more attention, and
that's why I'm so focused on it. For a long
time in Washington, people were really focused on these quote
unquote existential risks from AI, and I'm sure you've heard
of some of those. These are things like AI, you know,
hijacking the nuclear codes or becoming deceptive and sort of
taking over the world. The capabilities of AI haven't quite
(05:36):
reached that level, yet in a way that will have
broad sort of material impacts. And so when people talk
about the existential risks of AI in that context, I
always try to bring them back to this conversation that
we're having right now, because this is the one that
impacts how we think, who we are, how we show
up in the world as humans. And I personally think
(05:57):
that it is more existential on an individual and societal
level than some of these sort of terminator ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So that's why I'm.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So focused on it.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm focused on it not just to be negative, but
because I think it is one of the big issues
that we need to be thinking and talking about, particularly
as AI is getting more and more integrated into children's
lives and the lives of students and professionals just sort
of everywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well, what I like about the conduestion is that what
I like about the question is that it puts you
back in the driver's seat a little bit. I mean,
it allows you to really, as a human to think, Okay,
am I thinking that? Or is the artificial intelligence telling
me to think that?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Is that me? Or is that just what I'm seeing?
And I think we as humans, I'm a millennial.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I think we sort of first got that dose with
social media, like is that really happening or is that fomo?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Or is that what I'm seeing in the reels. There
was a study earlier this.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Year by chatch Ebt and MIT and n Gadget has
a great rate up on it. But essentially these new
studies from open Ai and MIT Media Lab found generally
the more time users spend talking to chat GPT, the
lonelier they feel, which sounds like a really big idea.
But then there's part of me that's like, Okay, well,
if you want to feel less lonely, go outside into
(07:12):
the world and talk to humans, you.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
So I think that a lot of this to your point,
which I totally kind of just had an aha moment on,
is you know that if you want to be healthy,
you got to eat your fruits and vegetables, you know
what I mean. You don't have to go on some
crazy diet like we all know you should probably have
an apple a day to keep the doctor away. If
you want to feel less lonely, maybe don't have a
(07:37):
friendship with the robot.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It seems so obvious of it, and yet here we
are and this is, as you know, like one of
the big issues that many people are talking about, including
the previous serves in general. You know, wrote a big
report about loneliness, and it wasn't just about technology and
technologies impact on exacerbating loneliness, but it was really just
about how, you know, we have a lot of institutions
(08:01):
and disconnect in the world just generally, and so technology
has definitely played a role in that, but there are
other reasons why people are feeling disconnected. But I want
to come back to really important point that you made
about the parallels between AI and social media, because it
is they are really similar. A study from I think
it was Stanford and Facebook when it was still called Facebook, gosh,
(08:23):
probably almost a decade ago now showed that when people
were getting on Facebook and just scrolling the lurking, if
you will, instead of posting and interacting. Yeah, yeah, doom scrolling.
And maybe this is even pre doom scrolling, but just
like consuming the stuff that was there instead of sharing
things about their life and getting reactions from people. Even
(08:43):
though it was on social media, those people were also
more lonely, They were less altruistic, they felt less connected.
And whether we're talking about AI or social media or
just being in the world. What we know is that
if you interact with people more, you're going to be
a happier person, because connecting with humans is something that
(09:04):
we all really really need as humans. And so it's
just interesting how and I think it's important to point
out that some of these problems or these these dynamics,
these themes, they come back over and over again, whether
we're talking about social media or AI.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But that's when you're talking to these companies, when you're
advising these companies.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But are they building their product to with that in mind?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Or are they just trying to get get you hooked
on AI, get you hooked on the robots, so that
so that when you're talking to them, you just become
addicted to them, you know, you feel like you have
to use them to do your job. Or because candidly,
I think a lot of people would argue with social media,
what we saw was they were just like, we don't
you know, it's really not about you being connected to
your high school class when you give away. It's about
(09:49):
you being addicted to the.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Product, right or it began there and slowly became something
else because of the way that incentives and you know, yeah,
the structure of our sort of commercial society works, right.
I mean, there's a great Atlantic article, I think it
was in the Atlantic all about how we've really made
this transition from social networking, right, which is about connecting
(10:11):
with people, to social media, which is about consumption. And
that consumption, to your point, is exactly you know what
is sort of like pulling us out of the physical
world and more onto the online world where we're getting
sort of absorbed by and addicted to these technologies. To
address really quickly your question about you know, what companies
(10:31):
are doing, most all of these companies have really you know,
well trained social scientists who are trying to figure out
sort of how to not just optimize you know, the
user experience on the platform, but also keep people off
the platform when it becomes unhealthy. Obviously, there are some
companies that prioritize this more than others. But we're seeing,
(10:54):
i think, in a really interesting way, a new emergence
of dating apps and dating type you know companies or
dating relationship focused companies that are really really focused specifically
on how human interactions with platforms can actually improve human
interactions in person. And it's probably a whole other conversation. Yeah,
(11:17):
but there's a lot of really really interesting work and
research happening here on platforms like Mino and another one
it's called look Up. But we could definitely talk about those.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
We'll do another date.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
With artificial intelligence. We'll have that next week. Yeah, well,
we'll definitely have to do that. Chloe Autio, thank you
so much for coming on the program to really talk
about that and to talk about just how human and
how it's changing and everything.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You really helped me understand so much of that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Chloe Autio, she advises the AI companies on all of
these big questions, and she's got more than executive experience really,
I mean's She was the director of Public Policy at
Intel Corp, where she led public policy.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Development and engagement on all of these issues.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Chloe Audio adjunct Artificial Intelligence Policy Advisors.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It's called thank You
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