Cognitive Debt: AI as Intellectual Leverage and the Dynamics of Systemic Fragility

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 13 Jun 2026] Cognitive Debt: AI as Intellectual Leverage and the Dynamics of Systemic Fragility Shuchen Meng We develop a formal theory of cognitive debt: the stock of unverified reasoning obligations that accumulates when individuals use AI as a substitute rather than a complement for first-principles cognition. The model features two state variables per agent, cognitive capital and cognitive debt, and a multiplicative production technology in which cognitive capital functions as collateral that determines the return to AI adoption. We establish six propositions. Rational agents incur positive cognitive debt because the costs are deferred, partially external, and masked by short-run productivity gains. Tranquil periods lower subjective risk assessments, raise AI substitution intensity, and compound leverage, generating a cognitive Minsky moment in which subjective risk falls while true systemic fragility rises. Expected crisis losses are convex in aggregate leverage. Post-crisis, output-target pressure can produce a false-correction loop in which agents patch AI failures with more AI. The decentralised equilibrium over-adopts substitutive AI relative to the social optimum because of systemic risk, cognitive public goods, and arms-race externalities. In a two-type heterogeneous-agent economy, high-cognitive-capital agents adopt AI more intensively and may eventually erode their unaided cognitive capital below that of initially lower-skilled agents. Comments: 46 pages, 3 figures. Preliminary version; comments welcome Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2606.15078 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2606.15078v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.15078 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Shuchen Meng [view email] [v1] Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:16:54 UTC (111 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.GT physics physics.soc-ph References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)