AI is a cognitive hot dog, The Verge argues

The Verge argues that AI is becoming a cognitive hot dog: satisfying in the moment, but harmful to the thinking systems humans developed over millions of years.

The computer model of the mind

The essay traces the idea that brains are computers back to Alan Turing. That model treated thought as input, computation and output, and it helped push computing from simple machines to today's AI. But The Verge says the model is warped. It quotes John von Neumann doubting that computation could capture the 'exceptional complexity of the human nervous system.'

Paul Cisek, a neuroscientist at the University of Montreal, offers a different frame. Brains are feedback-control systems, not information processors, The Verge reports. Bodies don't just receive input; they take action that changes the next input. John Dewey described the mind as a circuit more than a century ago.

The baseball example makes the difference clear. A computational outfielder would need to calculate velocity, gravity and trajectory. A feedback-control outfielder just keeps the ball fixed in the visual field and runs to maintain that. The Verge says that approach matches how brains actually evolved, including the development of the hippocampus.

The education problem

Applied to culture, The Verge argues AI is undermining the institutions humans built over millennia: imitation, language, writing, formal education, markets, law and democracy. The essay points to OpenAI and Anthropic. In a July 2025 podcast, OpenAI VP of education Leah Belsky said 'learners' were more than half of ChatGPT's 900 million monthly users and called it 'the world's largest learning platform.' Anthropic started 'Claude for Teachers,' giving classroom educators free access to premium models.

The Verge says those efforts won't help students. It cites a study from China in which thousands of students essentially stopped doing homework after adopting AI, which hurt learning. Researchers quoted in the piece warn of 'cognitive delegation': as people hand thinking off to AI, the conditions that support independent reasoning can fade, making the off-ramp even more attractive.

What to do

Resistance is growing, The Verge reports. Norway banned nearly all AI use in schools for students under 13. A major US teachers union has called for keeping chatbots out of elementary schools, and districts in Los Angeles and New York City have put bans in place. College graduates have booed commencement speakers who praised AI, and the Oberlin Luddite Club wrote an open letter about embracing 'human imperfection and raw inquiry' instead.

The Verge's conclusion: 'Eat healthy, and think healthy.' For most readers, that means using AI as an occasional helper, not a regular substitute for effortful thinking. Keep the unaided problem solving, the verification, and the critical discussion intact. That is the cognitive equivalent of skipping the hot dog.

• AI
• Anthropic
• ChatGPT
• cognitive science
• education
• OpenAI