Why do people vary so much? What are some of the factors that, you know, even if they don't go all the way in explaining decisions to offload, what are some of the factors that you've uncovered that account for some of this variance? Well,

in the domain of memory, which is where we've done most of our work, just how much you have to remember is one factor.

So if you give people a long list of items to remember, they tend to write it down or offload it in some other way.

If you just give them one thing to remember, they won't.

You also see differences between individuals, so people with better memory ability on average offload a little bit less than people with worse memory ability.

But what I think those two phenomena I just mentioned are filtered through is metacognition, that is, our ability to reflect on and to think about our own mental processes.

So it's not so much that people decide to write down information when they will forget it otherwise.

Of the phenomena we've discussed, the distinctions we've discussed, are there any that you think are especially helpful for thinking about the possible dangers or non-dangers of AI in this moment?