The Cognitive Divide

Vivienne Ming, Possibility Institute — experiment with UC Berkeley + Bay Area teams, Fall 2025
Business Insider, Mar 2026
90–95%
Substitution
Let AI generate answers for them, or used it to validate assumptions they already had. Outsourced thinking.
5–10%
"Cyborgs"
Used AI as a collaborator — explored ideas, challenged assumptions, created productive friction. "Don't tell me why I'm right — tell me why I'm wrong."
What separated the best outcomes?
Not better models — human traits: curiosity, intellectual humility, perspective-taking, and the ability to reason under uncertainty.
"If you're using it to think for you, this is your long-term cognitive health." — Vivienne Ming