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Mon, 18 May 2026

Mon, 18 May 2026 Instant AI answers can trivialise human intelligence, warns Royal Observatory

Paddy Rodgers said the Observatory's rich history showed the power of human knowledge and the need to avoid "dependence" on AI.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich's director, Paddy Rodgers, said that a reliance on instant answers from AI risks losing the habits of questioning and evaluation that underpin knowledge and expertise. He believes that human beings have always added value to technological innovations by asking questions and pursuing unexpected information. Rodgers cited the example of early astronomers who built a huge amount of data about the heavens, which was later used for purposes they had never thought about. He emphasized that humans did things "a machine would not do", leading to a valuable resource that could be used years after it was created. Despite AI's potential to aid scientific discoveries, as seen in the work of Sir Demis Hassabis and his tool AlphaFold2, experts warn against overreliance on technology. A lecturer at Oxford Brookes University said that while AI can enable students to focus on important parts of learning, simply outsourcing their thinking to the tech would highlight its limits. Generative AI products continue to evolve rapidly, with warnings about relying too heavily on them. Experts caution that users should be aware of the limitations and dangers of relying on AI, including losing critical thinking skills. Rodgers also noted that online tools like Wikipedia can be unreliable, and AI responses may omit important information. Dr Anuschka Schmitt from the London School of Economics emphasized that overreliance on technology can have negative consequences for human cognition and engagement. She advised considering when and where to use AI tools to avoid negatively impacting competencies, memory, and learning.