Want to Avoid AI Deskilling? Pilots May Have the Answer.
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Want to avoid AI deskilling? Pilots may have the answer.
By Thibault Spirlet
October 24, 2026, 11:05 AM GMT+2
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Pilots have relied on autopilot for decades. Their experience could offer a lesson for workers increasingly relying on AI.
Steven Shaw, an assistant professor at King's College London and coauthor of a widely cited study on "cognitive surrender", drew a parallel between pilots' reliance on automation and workers outsourcing their thinking and delegating their work to AI.
"We've had autopilot in planes for a very, very long time,” Shaw said, speaking at a recent OxGen Summit panel. "So they learn to fly manually first, and then they learn to use autopilot strategically."
Some federal aviation guidance encourages pilots to occasionally switch off autopilot to maintain their manual flying skills.
There is a long track record of this. In a 2013 safety alert, the Federal Aviation Administration warned that "continuous use of autoflight systems could lead to degradation of the pilot's ability to quickly recover the aircraft from an undesired state."
The agency reiterated the importance of manual flying in a 2017 alert, recommending that airlines encourage pilots to practice without autopilot periodically when conditions permit.
"Even experts are at risk of deskilling," Shaw said, referring to the dangers of repeatedly outsourcing cognitive tasks to AI.
Shaw's warning comes as some tech leaders, AI researchers, and politicians have cautioned that overreliance on AI could weaken workers' underlying cognitive abilities.
Speaking at More Perfect University's "Students vs. Billionaires" town hall in Maine on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that "AI's goal is to take your thoughts away from you, your ability to think away from you so that you become dependent on a machine."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed similar concerns.