{"id":118848,"date":"2026-05-18T11:31:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=118848"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:31:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:31:51","slug":"instant-ai-answers-can-trivialise-human-intelligence-warns-royal-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=118848","title":{"rendered":"Instant AI answers can trivialise human intelligence, warns Royal Observatory"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>3 Minute, 46 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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The rise of AI tools that instantly answer questions and complex problems could make humans less intelligent, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has warned.<\/p>\n

The Observatory, one of the UK\u2019s oldest purpose-built scientific institutions, is known for its contributions to astronomy.<\/p>\n

Paddy Rodgers, director of the Royal Museums Greenwich group which oversees it, said its rich history of research showed the power of human knowledge and curiosity \u2013 and the need to avoid \u201ccomplete dependence\u201d on AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cA reliance solely on instant answers risks losing the habits of questioning and evaluation that underpin knowledge, expertise and innovation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rodgers\u2019 remarks come amid an ongoing transformation of the Royal Observatory in a project called First Light.<\/p>\n

The project hopes to \u201cseize on the passion of all the astronomers over the last 350 years, and interpret that passion through science,\u201d Rodgers told the BBC.<\/p>\n

These discoveries, he said, would not have been possible without technological innovation.<\/p>\n

But he added they also would not have occurred without asking and pursuing answers to questions ourselves, and encountering unexpected information or results that AI systems might not relay.<\/p>\n

According to Rodgers, early astronomers \u201cbuilt a huge amount of data about the heavens which would subsequently be used for things that they had never thought about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Their work involved doing unnecessary things \u201ca machine would not do\u201d, he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe human beings did, and it ended up being a huge resource that could be used 150 years after they had written it up to help to verify ideas that people were having about what else impacted navigation on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Instant<\/figure>\n

At the same time, AI has been used to aid scientific discoveries.<\/p>\n

In 2024, computer scientist Sir Demis Hassabis\u00a0shared the Nobel prize for Chemistry\u00a0for \u201crevolutionary\u201d work on proteins, the building blocks of life.<\/p>\n

Sir Demis, chief executive of Google\u2019s AI company DeepMind, used AI to predict the structures of almost all known proteins and created a tool called AlphaFold2.<\/p>\n

LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman described AI as a \u201ctransformation\u201d of \u201ccognitive excellence\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cUse it as a counter-agent,\u201d he recently\u00a0told the BBC\u2019s Radical podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cE.g. \u2018What\u2019s wrong with my idea?\u2019 One of the basic things to use AI [for] is \u2018I think X, are you against it?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Academics and students have also shared experiences of research benefits, including using the tech to challenge ideas or work through solutions collaboratively.<\/p>\n

A lecturer at Oxford Brookes University\u00a0told the BBC last June\u00a0that \u201cwhen used responsibly, AI tools enable students to direct their attention to the more important parts of learning and improve their self-development.\u201d<\/p>\n

But they added that to simply \u201coutsource their thinking\u201d to the tech would highlight its limits.<\/p>\n

Limits v promise<\/h2>\n

Generative AI products that can respond to increasingly complex prompts with text, images, video or audio continue to be developed at pace.<\/p>\n

Chatbots have evolved from simple assistants into chatty companions, image generators have become dangerously good at making photorealistic content and new advanced models\u00a0are said to be surfacing decades-old software bugs.<\/p>\n

Such advances, praised and scrutinised in equal measure, are still also accompanied by warnings to users of the tech\u2019s limitations and dangers of relying on it.<\/p>\n

Rodgers said with previous online tools such as Wikipedia, \u201cif you were interested in something you could perhaps go back to a fundamental source and check it\u2026 and see whether or not you found something that was reliable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such information can be omitted in quick AI responses, he added, meaning \u201cyou\u2019re getting more and more distanced from relatable or checkable information\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Dr Anuschka Schmitt, assistant professor of information systems at the London School of Economics, \u201cthe harmful and unintended consequences of technology, including overreliance, are nothing new\u201d.<\/p>\n

But conversational AI systems capable of performing many tasks, in a human-like way, have \u201cdramatically reduced the barrier for humans to forego cognitive effort and engagement for work, learning, and leisure,\u201d she told the BBC.<\/p>\n

Dr Schmitt said with studies of so-called \u201ccognitive outsourcing\u201d revealing \u201chow competencies, memory and learning are quickly but negatively impacted by the use of contemporary AI,\u201d it was important to consider when and where to use it.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, generative AI tools that present us with information we do not have to find ourselves are on the rise.<\/p>\n

AI Overviews have now replaced snippets or lists of links at the top of Google search results, with similar experiments appearing on social platforms like TikTok and X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The rise of AI tools that instantly answer questions and complex problems could make humans less intelligent, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has warned.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3344,1910,10,9,17979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-international","category-politics","category-popular","category-royal-observatory-greenwich"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/118857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}