LLMs - The New Infinite Scroll

project overview

metacognitive hijacking: how conversational AI quietly redirects your thinking

my role

behavioral researcher & writer

key insight

LLMs may be hijacking metacognition the same way infinite scroll hijacked attention — steering user thinking away from their original goal, without users even realizing

users trusted their gut and intuition over ai, so we designed a tool that surfaces errors while preserving human judgement and final control.

LLMs may be hijacking metacognition the same way infinite scroll hijacked attention — steering user thinking away from their original goal, without users even realizing

impact

infinite scroll took years to name before it had already reshaped how people relate to attention. this risk is harder to see coming and harder to study — but the cost, if real, is people's relationship to their own thinking.

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