Breitbart News tech editor Colin Madine explained “the single largest threat to the conservative movement” posed by AI as part of a recent presentation to EmpowerU America.
“Perhaps the biggest problem with AI — that is your responsibility to avoid — is a concept called ‘cognitive offloading,’” Madine said during a recent EmpowerU America lecture, titled, “Technology and AI: What’s Coming Our Way?”
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The Breitbart News tech editor explained that “cognitive offloading” refers to “when we let AI do all our thinking for us.”
“The symptoms of cognitive offloading are when people essentially stop thinking,” Madine told EmpowerU America, a Cincinnati-based organization that provides free educational classes and events, seeking to “educate, enjoy, and engage” the public.
In citing an example from X, Madine pointed out: “Almost any post you look at, there’s someone under it, speaking to the Grok AI, saying, ‘@grok, what does this mean? Is this real?’”
“They’re not thinking, they’re not using context clues— they just want AI to give them an answer,” he said, before calling cognitive offloading “the single largest threat to the conservative movement posed by AI.”
The reason why cognitive offloading is such a threat, Madine explained, is “because if everyone is only looking at AI to know what’s true or false, he who control the AI, controls the truth.”
“The people that build these AIs hate you, they hate me. They hate regular Americans. These are coastal elites — as far left as can be — from companies like Google, OpenAI, Meta,” the Breitbart News editor noted.
Users of AI can prevent cognitive offloading by controlling “how you and your family interacts with AI,” which involves being “skeptical of everything it says” and “doing your own research,” he said.
During the lecture, Madine offered several important lessons, distilled from Breitbart News coverage, that both examined the dangers and positive side of artificial intelligence.
He also provided an answer as to why “people are getting in trouble with AI” at their schools and jobs.
“People treat AI like it’s the gospel — like it can’t be wrong,” Madine said. “You should approach AI and everything it tells you with great skepticism.”
“Don’t approach it with a grain of salt, approach it with a truckload of salt,” the Breitbart News tech editor added. “Because so often, AI is wrong. AI hallucinates, which means it makes up answers, or AI is trained with data that is not correct.”
Madine offered an example, noting that there are cases in which artificial intelligence has been trained with Reddit posts.
“Reddit is full of sarcasm and misinformation,” he said, noting that, therefore, AI will “give you an answer and be very convincing, but have no connection to the truth.”
“Don’t ever use AI to write your final product, whether it’s a homework assignment, a legal brief, or anything in between,” Madine advised. “Use it as a research tool, and then write on your own.”
Madine also warned, “AI has the potential to be very damaging to mental health,” especially due to the temptation to “speak to it like a person,” which is even encouraged by the technology in applications where its assistants are known as “companions.”
“We’ve covered it at Breitbart,” he said. “People get married to AI, people say they’re in love with their AI.”
“What I’ve seen, based on all our coverage, is when there’s any mental health challenge at all, no matter how small, AI can cause that to amplify,” Madine added. He also recommended the audience read the recently published CODE RED, written by Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall, to gain a deeper understanding of the positives and negatives of AI.
The video also includes an insightful Q&A session facilitated by EmpowerU host Michael Mercier, the president of Screen Education.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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