Vivienne Ming, a UC San Diego graduate and machine learning researcher, is warning that the rush to build smarter artificial intelligence is doing more than change work. It may be changing how people think.
Ming, who earned a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science from UC San Diego in 2000, says modern agentic systems can now do an entire task from start to finish. That is not just a faster version of old automation, she argues. In her view, it is something fundamentally different. “It can automate the whole process — and that’s historically new,” she said. “This is not the Industrial Revolution.”
The neuroscientist, inventor and entrepreneur is the author of a new book, “Robot-Proof,” which takes aim at the way AI is being built and sold. Ming is chief scientist for Possibility Sciences, a company that says it works to narrow what it calls the “possibility gap.” She also founded Berkeley-based Socos Labs in 2011 and holds advanced degrees in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.
Her warning comes as AI tools move deeper into daily life, from search and recommendations to systems that can generate text, code and decisions with little human steering. Ming said the machine learning industry is pouring resources into making AI smarter and more autonomous while neglecting the human side of the equation. She said GPS and algorithmic feeds have already produced measurable and concerning changes in how people think. “People are changing how they think when they use these tools in ways that scare me,” she said. “We should be careful that what we’re building doesn’t automate away the very capacities that make us human,” she added.
Ming called that drift “the imagination disease,” a shorthand for her concern that convenience can quietly reshape judgment, memory and creativity. The tension in her argument is clear: the same systems designed to extend human capability may also make people less capable of certain kinds of thought. That is why her book lands now, in the middle of a broader fight over how far AI should go and what parts of human work, and human cognition, should remain off limits.