Fast, Slow, and Artificial — a Conversation With Dr. Steven Shaw on AI and Cognitive Surrender

For decades, we've understood human reasoning through two systems: the fast, intuitive one and the slow, deliberate one. But that framework was built before AI became a thinking partner. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Steven Shaw — a Canadian scholar and postdoctoral fellow at the Wharton School — to talk about his new framework, Tri-System Theory, and what it means that AI now functions as a third cognitive system operating outside the brain.Shaw coined the term "cognitive surrender" to describe what happens when we adopt AI outputs without critical evaluation — not as a deliberate choice, but as a quiet default. We get into how it differs from simply using AI as a tool and what it looks like across clinical documentation and graduate training. Plus a practical challenge to close.Dr. Shaw's preprintDr. Shaw's websiteKnowledge at Wharton podcast