> Large Language Models represent a fundamentally degenerative technology because they systemically devalue the very processes that underpin human progress: original thought, rigorous inquiry, and shared trust. On an individual level, they encourage cognitive offloading, substituting the difficult work of critical thinking and creative synthesis with effortless, probabilistic text generation. This fosters an atrophy of intellectual skills, making society more dependent on automated systems and less capable of genuinely emancipated thought. This intellectual dependency, in turn, threatens long-term technological advancement by trapping us in a recursive loop of recycling and rephrasing existing knowledge, rather than fostering the groundbreaking, first-principles discoveries that drive true progress. Ultimately, this technology is dangerous for society because it erodes the foundation of a shared reality by enabling the mass production of sophisticated misinformation, corroding social trust, and concentrating immense power over information into the hands of a few unaccountable entities.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection