I’m curious if there are studies that go into how humans have changed as a result of their new technologies - human behavior, education, development, social patterns etc. I have a feeling it’s a two way street - we make the technologies and they remake us to a smaller degree. Has this balance started to shift in the machines’ favor? That is, they will be able to change us at a greater intensity and speed than we can affect them?

I’m scared of a dumbing down of a significant chunk of the population if soon, black boxes are able to perform critical thinking functions in behalf of folks for a lot of everyday tasks. One could just switch off mentally and have the machine do everything, even advising or making decisions on one’s behalf.

Sure, top engineers and programmers will continue to work with autonomous intelligences on a high level but they constitute a tiny fraction of humanity, most of whom have outsourced imagination and critical thinking to the all knowing blackboxes.