08/26/2026
What do business executives, military commanders, and anesthesiologists all have in common? They must make high-stakes decisions in stressful environments while battling cognitive overload.
Given our brain's limited ability to juggle multiple pieces of short-term memory simultaneously, extra data can cause mental short-circuits and lead to poor decision-making.
Now, AI is (literally) entering the conversation. As a computer, AI is better than humans at managing and synthesizing multiple data streams. In fact, I've given several talks on this exact process at military conferences, including a recent one with the Army Cyber Command.
The point, as I see it, is that AI should make it easier for human decision-makers by compiling data, creating summaries, and REDUCING COMPLEXITY.
Unfortunately, many companies are doing the opposite. There was a recent WSJ article (link in comments) about how many businesses are encouraging their employees to use public Slack channels explicitly so their AI tools can read their messages.
The problem?
By the company's own admission, this will cause irrelevant junk messages (from the human employee's perspective) to overwhelm the public Slack channels. That's good for AI, but bad for people. Policies like these increase cognitive overload and complexity and reduce humans' decision-making ability, all in the name of feeding the AI system.
I can see this not ending well. What are your thoughts?
- Dr. Gregory Charlop