The Cost of Convenience: Calendars, Google, and AI

My memory surrounds me. Memories aren’t contained just within our heads. Our memories are stored in calendars and notes, in pictures and photo albums, on social media and in social groups. My knowledge is in my head and in the phone in my pocket. I know my memory is limited, so I offload my memory to a variety of people and things.

Benefits of Cognitive Offloading My Memory

Cognitive offloading is placing some aspects of my memory, knowledge, and thinking outside my own head. This is one of the glorious things about writing—I can keep my memories in a more reliable form. This is also why I need my calendars. I know my standard weekly schedule and always remember to show up for my classes and office hours. But I have a lot of extra meetings and appointments. I don’t remember these. But my phone and email calendars remind me. And I rarely miss an important meeting.

I also keep some of my memory and knowledge inside the brains of other people. Social groups have always involved cognitive offloading. I know who in my family has which knowledge. I count on some of my friends to track and manage some of our joint activities. Knowing where to find a memory or bit of knowledge from your friends and family is a form of cognitive offloading called transactive memory (Wegner, 1986; Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991). I don’t have to remember everything if I know who holds what ideas in their heads. We are smarter as a group than any one of us is alone.

The Risks of Offloading Memories

I offload my memories because I know that I forget things, especially appointments. Unfortunately, offloading memories seems to mean that I will forget. This is one of the risks of cognitive offloading.

Taking pictures is an excellent way to record events. We can look back at the photos on our phones and be reminded of the past. But taking pictures may erase our memories (see one of my earlier posts, "Photographs and Memories"). In several different studies, researchers have found that people are less able to remember aspects of events when they took photos than when they didn’t (Henkel, 2014; Lurie & Westerman, 2021). At one time, I thought this photo impairment effect resulted from divided attention. But maybe not. Maybe it is just that creating an external record means that we expend less effort on creating an internal memory (Lurie et al., 2025).

The Risks of Offloading Knowledge

Google it. Like my students, I often rely on Google when I need an answer to a question. If I have my phone, I have all the world's knowledge in my pocket. Of course, I have a lot of knowledge in my head, especially in my areas of expertise. Nonetheless, I sometimes use Google (and especially Google Scholar) to double-check. Maybe you double-check with Google too.

But if people use Google to check for answers for a few tasks, they become more likely to rely on the internet for information. Even when the questions are simple and they probably have the knowledge in their own heads, people turn to the internet and Google it. Benjamin Storm, Dana-Lis Bittner, and their colleagues have called this an internet fixation (Bittner & Storm, 2026; Storm, 2019; Storm, Bittner, & Yamashiro, 2024).

Of course, no one keeps all the world’s knowledge in their head—we can’t know everything. I used to rely on printed copies of academic articles that I kept in file cabinets. Now, most of the academic articles I use in teaching and research are stored as PDFs on my computer. But I don’t look up everything since I keep many of the basics in my mind. There’s nothing wrong with having knowledge storage in file cabinets, computer file folders, and the internet. But relying too much could mean not having the knowledge you need to even look things up, much less evaluate what you find.

The Risks of Offloading Your Thinking to AI

I also offload some of my thinking. I can do math and statistics. But I will use a calculator for complex problems. And even though I enjoy doing data analysis and calculating statistics by hand, I generally use my computer. I am faster and more reliable when using my computer.

But I haven’t started offloading my writing to any of the AI systems.

I am worried about my students who engage in cognitive offloading of their work and writing to AI systems. Oh, the work will be completed. But will they remember it? Probably not. In a recent paper, Kosmyna and colleagues (2025) reported that students who used ChatGPT for help with writing a paper were less able to remember the content of the paper than students who used a search engine and students who used their brain only. The ChatGPT students also felt less ownership of their essays.

Memory Essential Reads

Why We Screenshot Things We'll Never Look at Again

Are We Still Friends? The Importance of Memory Updating

AI use affects not only education but also work systems. Lee and colleagues (2026) found that people feel both less ownership of AI work and less self-efficacy following the use of AI. People began to doubt their own ability to do the work, which would probably add to greater reliance on AI in the future. Shaw and Nave (2026) have reported that people will use AI, even when the suggestions lead to errors, and they don’t catch the errors. If we want people to be able to learn information, think critically, and catch errors, then we need them to develop those skills. We need people to be able to do the work and become experts. Otherwise, they will never be able to monitor any work that gets handed off to AI systems.

Memory and skill development rely on how we process information when we encounter it. When we simply grab information from the internet, we are less likely to remember it. Developing skills in critical evaluation and writing requires that one engage in those tasks. Relying on AI will mean people aren’t trained to think critically or write effectively. And AI use also increases the risk that errors will spread.