The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age

Original URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2026/06/ai-cognition-volition-personal-identity/682506/

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Article Summary

David Brooks argues that in the AI age, what differentiates people will not be intelligence but their relationship to mental effort — their "need for cognition." He maps three groups: Productive Passengers (low need for cognition, use AI to think less, risk hollowing out), Reluctant Optimizers (medium need, resolve to resist but get sucked in), and Mental Marathoners (high need, use AI to increase agency). The risk is extreme cognitive polarization — society dividing into two species. The solution: reform institutions around volition rather than content, teaching people to hunger for difficulty. Because what AI can't do is desire — it has no biological needs, no self, no structure of cares, no personal history of wounds and joys. The defining human features are propulsions and aspirations.