Why societies are becoming passive in the age of instant answers

As artificial intelligence reshapes economies, institutions, and everyday life, public debate has largely focused on familiar divides: access to digital tools, infrastructure limitations, or the lack of technical skills among citizens. These challenges are real. Yet they obscure a deeper and more disruptive phenomenon that is emerging across societies — one that I define as the AI Knowledge Gap.

This gap is not primarily about who has access to artificial intelligence, nor about who can technically operate AI tools. It is a divide growing within societies themselves, between those who continue to learn, question, and understand, and those who increasingly outsource learning and thinking to machines.

For decades, educators and policymakers were concerned with information scarcity. Today, the challenge is the opposite: abundance. AI systems deliver instant summaries, explanations, translations, interpretations, and opinions. With this convenience comes a dangerous illusion. When knowledge appears to be only one click away, the motivation to learn weakens. This is the core of the AI Knowledge Gap: the gradual shift from active learning to passive consumption. Increasingly, AI is used not as a tool that supports thinking, but as a substitute for it.

The AI Knowledge Gap emerges when individuals begin to believe that learning itself is no longer necessary because answers can always be generated on demand. This represents a profound cognitive and cultural shift. If left unaddressed, its consequences may prove more far-reaching than those of any technological transformation witnessed over the past half- century.

AI-generated content often produces a feeling of understanding without the effort required for genuine comprehension. Psychologists describe this phenomenon as the illusion of explanatory depth. In the age of artificial intelligence, this illusion is becoming a defining societal challenge. It is driven by three interconnected dynamics: the ease of knowledge acquisition, the personalization of agreeable answers, and the dominance of speed over reflection. Together, they foster a subtle but persistent dependency, in which individuals believe they “know” something because an algorithm has produced an answer, not because they have engaged critically with the subject.

The implications of this gap extend far beyond education. The AI Knowledge Gap is not merely a pedagogical concern; it carries significant political, economic, ethical, and strategic consequences. Democratically, it weakens public life by reducing citizens’ capacity to distinguish verified information from plausible but misleading simplifications, rendering public debate more superficial and vulnerable to manipulation. In informational terms, it amplifies the effectiveness of misinformation: when reliance on AI-generated summaries replaces source verification, errors, distortions, and embedded biases are more likely to circulate unchallenged. Economically, it undermines competitiveness, as AI-driven sectors increasingly demand workers capable of understanding, auditing, and supervising intelligent systems rather than merely using them. Socially, it deepens inequality, as a relatively small group that understands how AI systems function gains disproportionate decision-making power over a much larger group that does not. Strategically, it contributes to widening geopolitical imbalances, as nations investing in critical AI literacy shape global norms and governance frameworks, while others remain dependent consumers of technologies they neither fully understand nor control.

Taken together, these dynamics make AI literacy not simply desirable, but a national imperative. Preparing societies for this shift can no longer be postponed.

Bridging the AI Knowledge Gap requires a move beyond conventional digital literacy toward AI-critical literacy — the capacity to question, interpret, and responsibly assess AI outputs. This entails sustained investment in short, practical, and widely accessible learning programmes for students, teachers, journalists, public servants, and professionals. Such initiatives must focus not only on how to use AI tools, but on how to evaluate them, challenge their outputs, and understand their limitations.

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly expand opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and governance across Europe, India, and the wider world. Yet technological adoption must be accompanied by cognitive resilience. A society that abandons learning in favour of automated answers risks weakening its ability to think critically and adapt to change.

Addressing the AI Knowledge Gap is therefore not optional. It is a prerequisite for building AI-powered societies that remain human-centred, democratic, and capable of sustained and meaningful innovation.

END OF ARTICLE