No Links, No Thinking: How AI Flattens Us
When we read online, links are cognitive leaps. Cues. Choices. Potential deep dives. They open windows onto other worlds, other contexts, other opinions. They’re not just references. They are invitations to complexity.
But in the era of “AI Overviews,” those links disappear. Everything is summarized, compressed, pre-digested. We’re no longer asked to follow an idea. We’re handed an outcome. And that’s the problem.
An AI-generated summary is not neutral. It decides what matters and what doesn’t. It decides what’s central and what should be left on the margins. It flattens. It doesn’t explore. It cuts nuance, tension, disagreement. It gives you the answer, not the path.
This means that, slowly, we lose the habit of critical thinking. We’re no longer asked to navigate information. Only to consume it. We no longer choose what to read. We’re told what we “need to know.”
But who decides that? Based on what criteria? And with what worldview?
Worse still: as we get used to this way of reading, it changes the way we think. Our thinking becomes linear, synthetic, uniform. No longer divergent, deep, open. It’s a form of cognitive reduction. Invisible, but profound.
So the real question isn’t “Is AI good at summarizing?” The question is: how much do we still want to think for ourselves?
Because this isn’t just about speeding up reading. It’s about giving up the journey.
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Marco Camisani Calzolari
marcocamisanicalzolari.com/biography