{"id":829,"date":"2026-09-18T18:58:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T18:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.clarkson.edu\/ai-institute\/workbench\/critique\/offloading-audit\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T19:07:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T19:07:58","slug":"offloading-audit","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.clarkson.edu\/ai-institute\/workbench\/critique\/offloading-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Offloading Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\u2190 Critique<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Workbench<\/a> \/ 08 Critique<\/a> \/ The offloading audit<\/p>\n

Am I still doing the thinking<\/em>?<\/h2>\n

Twelve questions about four habits, about ten minutes, nothing stored. At the end you get a reading for each habit, the studies behind it, and a plan short enough to keep. This is not a test of intelligence. It is a check on where the thinking is happening: in you, or in the window.<\/p>\n

Offloading is not the enemy. Unnoticed offloading is.<\/p>\n <\/header>\n\n

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What the word means<\/p>\n

Cognitive offloading is “the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand.” That is the 2016 definition from Evan Risko and Sam Gilbert, and their examples are homely: tilting your head to read a rotated page, setting a reminder on your phone. Writing itself is offloading. So is a library. Humans have always put memory and calculation into the world so that our heads could do something else.<\/p>\n

The trouble starts when the offloading happens without our noticing, and when the thing we hand over is the thing we were supposed to be building. In 2011 a study in Science<\/em> found that people remembered trivia less well when they believed a computer would save it, and remembered where<\/em> it was saved better than what it said. In 2020 a study of drivers found that a lifetime of GPS use predicted worse spatial memory, and that heavier users declined faster over three years. Nobody decided to stop being able to find their way home. It just happened, one turn at a time.<\/p>\n

Generative AI is offloading at a different scale, because the thing it takes is not a fact or a route but the act of composing, reasoning and judging. Whether that costs you anything depends on how you set it up. Which is what the audit is for.<\/p>\n

Sources: Risko & Gilbert, TICS 2016<\/a> · Sparrow, Liu & Wegner, Science 2011<\/a> (one experiment did not replicate in 2018; the direction held) · Dahmani & Bohbot, Scientific Reports 2020<\/a> · checked Sep 2026<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n

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The audit<\/p>\n

Four habits, three questions each<\/h3>\n

Answer for how you have actually worked in the last month, not how you would like to. Nobody sees this but you.<\/p>\n

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Habit 1 · Verify<\/h4>\n
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When an AI gives me a fact, a number or a citation, I open the source before I use it.<\/p>