Whether we’d admit it or not, most of us by now have offloaded some cognitive effort onto AI. Chatbots and agents have become so commonplace that it’s often tricky to avoid them. The stakes of this use are usually pretty low; we may compromise some of our own critical thinking skills and creativity in the process, but the harm stops there. In some cases, however, an over-reliance on automation can have major downstream consequences.

Cybersecurity is the most notable example. Thankfully, that’s a field that most of us almost never have to think about, because most of the time, the computer systems running critical infrastructure—from water treatment facilities to the stock market—function as they’re supposed to. But many of those systems haven’t been updated in decades. S. Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Defense’s in-house IT system has been in use since before the first Apollo moon landing. ) “These agencies’ missions are essential to government operations such as health care, critical infrastructure, tax processing, and national security, and these legacy systems provide vital support to the agencies’ missions,” the GAO wrote in its report. S. government, so much so that during the pandemic the governor of New Jersey was forced to put out a call for “cobalt” (his word) programmers to help maintain the state’s decrepit, aged, and overwhelmed unemployment system.

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