Accumulation of Cognitive Capital when Using an AI to Reflect On Essay Writings

When LLMs write essays, humans' cognitive engagement worsens

Last week, MIT's Media Lab published the now viral (sic!) paper Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. Given this brain scan study of ChatGPT users, people start declaring that generating texts with LLMs bankrupts our cognition, see the discussion on HackerNews and the 𝕏-posts Fermat's Library, Alex Vacca. The evident conclusion is, LLMs diminish critical thinking capabilities, and people have less ownership of their essays.

YET, the point of writing had always been to develop nuanced thinking, to build coherent mental models. PG had a nice essay about good writing.

LLMs are most powerful as semantic observers and advisors

We should thus start using AI assistants as cognitive mirrors that sharpen rather than replace human thinking processes. This requires a shift in how we deploy them: instead of outsourcing essay generation, we position LLMs as meta-cognitive assessors that analyze meaning and logic patterns within our writing.

The LLM examines your text for cognitive friction points - passages with cognitive overwhelm, where biases distort your arguments, and where analysis paralysis traps you in circular reasoning. LLMs should guide in creating coherent flow. They should be a semantic aid, they should surface tacit cognitive patterns.

In the study, participants who first wrote without assistance and LATER used an LLM showed increased neural activity and better cognitive engagement.

So I went off and built COGILO, a Google Docs Add-on, cogilo.me

Use Cogilo to reflect your thoughts

Cogilo analyzes your writing. It provides feedback on key cognitive patterns: Analysis Paralysis, Information Overload, Uncertainty, and Flow State. It goes ahead and marks the passages where cognitive load is most evident. Post-hoc rewrite suggestions powered by Opus 4, allowing you to compare before and after, make you see how you refine the text.

It started as an internal tool so it's free of charge. You can find Cogilo on the Google Workspace Marketplace.

What are Cogilo's principles?

In an LLM-text era, Cogilo gives back COGNITIVE AGENCY to humans. It increases semantic understanding and makes your writing clearer. The reflections and suggestions will help you become a deeper and more nuanced thinker.

Because ultimately, we believe AI came to reflect human intelligence.