We have offloaded work to machines for a long time and it has allowed us to focus more on where the human input matter more. But is there a limit to what mental tasks we can offload to a computer and what will that mean for ourselves? Mark W. Tiedemann explores those dilemmas in this little short story.

Analog January/February 2025

The story follows a rather successful lawyer who despite his good reputation feels like he need to get an neurological implant in order to keep up. It is best described as a thing resembling an AI agent that is linked directly to the brain where it will offload what is described as “routine tasks”. The lawyer can see the benefits and it has clearly improved productivity immensely for his coworkers that have the same implant, but he is also worried what it will do to his own free will and critical thinking.

The analogy to current AI models are pretty obvious, but using it in a story like this in a corporate environment makes for an interesting angle to comment on these issues. If everyone is offloading some mental tasks to a machine, how will that form society int he long run? It is an open ended story that is more or less only premise and little to no dramatic narrative, but it definitely got me thinking.

Read in Analog January/February 2025
Rating: 3+