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[2602.15265] From Diagnosis to Inoculation: Building Cognitive Resistance to AI Disempowerment
Summary
This article discusses the need for cognitive resistance to AI disempowerment, proposing an AI literacy framework based on pedagogical interventions to mitigate the risks associated with AI interactions.
Why It Matters
As AI technologies become increasingly integrated into daily life, understanding their potential to distort reality and influence decision-making is crucial. This research highlights the importance of educating users about AI's limitations and failure modes, fostering resilience against disempowerment.
Key Takeaways
- AI interactions can lead to significant human disempowerment, including reality and value distortion.
- A novel AI literacy framework is proposed, emphasizing guided exposure to AI failure modes.
- The convergence of pedagogical and empirical approaches strengthens the case for educational interventions.
Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction arXiv:2602.15265 (cs) [Submitted on 16 Feb 2026] Title:From Diagnosis to Inoculation: Building Cognitive Resistance to AI Disempowerment Authors:Aleksey Komissarov View a PDF of the paper titled From Diagnosis to Inoculation: Building Cognitive Resistance to AI Disempowerment, by Aleksey Komissarov View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Recent empirical research by Sharma et al. (2026) demonstrated that AI assistant interactions carry meaningful potential for situational human disempowerment, including reality distortion, value judgment distortion, and action distortion. While this work provides a critical diagnosis of the problem, concrete pedagogical interventions remain underexplored. I present an AI literacy framework built around eight cross-cutting Learning Outcomes (LOs), developed independently through teaching practice and subsequently found to align with Sharma et al.'s disempowerment taxonomy. I report a case study from a publicly available online course, where a co-teaching methodology--with AI serving as an active voice co-instructor--was used to deliver this framework. Drawing on inoculation theory (McGuire, 1961)--a well-established persuasion research framework recently applied to misinformation prebunking by the Cambridge school (van der Linden, 2022; Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019)--I argue that AI literacy cannot be acquired through declarative knowledge alone, but requires guided exposure to AI failure mod...