This post is a guest contribution by George Siosi Samuels, managing director at Faiā. See how Faiā is committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements here.
TL;DR: Classic consumerism enslaved desire. Cognitive consumerism, accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), risks enslaving thought. A blockchain protocol set in stone offers the structural anchor to preserve sovereignty in an age of outsourced cognition.
What was classic consumerism?
Based on a lecture by Professor Jiang Xueqin, the 20th century perfected a model of identity: “I buy, therefore I am” where:
- Status came from possessions: clothes, houses, cars, and brands.
- Advertising, mass media, and celebrity culture manufactured desire.
- Workers became consumers, fueling the cycle of production and purchase.
According to Professor Jiang, the result was voluntary participation in a system of slavery through desire. You wanted all the things, so you kept working for them.
Academic literature has long highlighted this cycle. Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) described “conspicuous consumption” as the act of buying goods to display status. In the mid-20th century, thinkers like Herbert Marcuse argued that consumerism was less about fulfilling needs and more about manufacturing them through industrial systems of advertising and media (Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 1964).
So what is cognitive consumerism?
The 21st century is ushering in a new dynamic: “I outsource thinking, therefore I am.”
- Instead of buying things, people now consume answers, insights, and decisions.
- Elites no longer just control desire; they control knowledge curation through AI models, platforms, and agent ecosystems.
- Workers shift from being producers of thought to operators of outputs.
Though it may sound extreme, the result is a form of slavery through thought-dependency. People willingly defer to AI because “it knows better.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has already flagged the risk of over-dependence on generative AI, warning that “knowledge workers may cede critical decision-making to systems they do not fully understand” (WEF, 2024).
How does cognitive consumerism work in practice?
The mechanics are already familiar:
- Search → Predictive answers
- Google Search (NASDAQ: GOOGL) shifted us from seeking knowledge to receiving snippets.
- AI accelerates this trend: we no longer explore, we accept prepackaged truths.
- Learning → Instant skills
- Why learn coding, law, or writing when GPT can output it in seconds?
- Skills risk collapsing into cheap commodities.
- Decision-making → Delegation
- Personal agents can now schedule calendars, make investment choices, and even suggest dating options.
- Soon, the individual is not deciding but merely approving what AI decides.
A 2023 Stanford study found that participants using AI for professional writing “not only completed tasks faster but also displayed a measurable decline in independent problem-solving when repeatedly exposed to AI-generated solutions” (Stanford HAI, 2023).
This loop of convenience → dependency → erosion of sovereignty is the hallmark of cognitive consumerism.
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Why is this more dangerous than classic consumerism?
- Classic consumerism enslaved wallets and desire.
- Cognitive consumerism enslaves minds and discernment.
If the last century made people work more to buy more, this century risks making people think less to be less.
For high-capacity founders I’ve worked with, whether as clients or as members of my GSD Lab, this manifests as a constant feeling of being lost in the vast “digital ocean.” They have every tool imaginable, but their confidence in their own judgment erodes. That is cognitive consumerism in action.
MIT researchers have also shown that “AI delegation creates a measurable reduction in perceived self-efficacy,” meaning users lose trust in their own judgment after repeated reliance on automated decisions (MIT Sloan Review, 2023).
The enterprise dilemma
For enterprises, the stakes are higher. Decision-making at scale is no longer just about efficiency but sovereignty of thought.
- If your strategy team outsources analysis to a closed-model AI, you accept hidden assumptions built into that model.
- If your HR systems rely on opaque algorithms for hiring, you risk embedding biases you cannot audit.
- If your investment division delegates decisions to black-box agents, you risk misalignment with corporate strategy.
In each case, cognitive consumerism is not just an individual risk—it becomes an organizational vulnerability.
Gartner predicts that by 2027, “over 45% of enterprise decisions will be either made or significantly influenced by AI systems,” raising questions about transparency and control (Gartner, 2023).
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How can blockchain help?
The danger with AI isn’t its raw power—it’s who sets the rules.
Centralized entities control most AI platforms. Their curation of data and reinforcement of certain “truths” create invisible dependencies. If left unchecked, cognitive consumerism could centralize human thought itself.
This is where blockchain’s protocol set in stone, matters:
- Immutable rules: Just as money anchored in transparent ledgers resists manipulation, cognition anchored in fixed protocols resists capture.
- Audit trails: Decisions and outputs generated by AI can be verified against shared, tamper-proof records.
- Sovereignty of infrastructure: Enterprises can build on top of a reliable substrate rather than rent cognition from shifting platform policies.
When I worked with the government of Tuvalu on our proposed National Digital Ledger idea, the vision was similar: safeguard sovereignty through a ledger no single entity could rewrite. The same principle applies here. If AI is the ocean, blockchain is the reef system—an unchanging structure that prevents drift.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has noted that distributed ledgers provide “credible commitment devices”—systems that remove discretionary control and therefore minimize manipulation (BIS Quarterly Review, 2021). Applied to AI, such anchoring could prevent elites from subtly steering global cognition.
Escaping the trap of cognitive consumerism
The solution is not to abandon AI but to redesign our relationship.
- Orchestration over consumption. Don’t just use AI tools—design your stack and agent systems. Treat them as orchestras, not vending machines.
- Wisdom over knowledge. Anchor in meaning, context, and culture. These are things AI cannot authentically generate.
- Sovereignty over dependency. Own your workflows, data, and agent infrastructure. Don’t rent cognition from elites.
This is the essence of Conscious Stack Design™: a methodology that helps leaders avoid becoming passive consumers of cognition and instead become active designers of their digital ecosystems.
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What enterprises can do today?
- Run stack audits: Assess where your workflows rely on opaque AI and replace black-box dependencies with verifiable infrastructure.
- Anchor in blockchain: Use immutable ledgers for critical decision trails to maintain accountability.
- Invest in stack literacy: Train teams not just to use AI tools, but to design systems consciously — integrating wisdom, culture, and context into workflows.
McKinsey recently reported that enterprises achieving the highest ROI from AI are those that “develop governance systems, integrate cross-functional literacy, and align digital adoption with cultural coherence” (McKinsey, 2023). This is stack design in action.
Historical parallels: from printing press to AI
Every technological revolution shifted power. The printing press democratized information but created new monopolies. Industrialization expanded productivity but locked workers into factory schedules. The internet enabled global connectivity, yet platforms like Facebook and Google became gatekeepers.
AI’s rise is no different. It promises empowerment, but without anchors, risks repeating the same pattern: concentrated control dressed as liberation. Historian Yuval Harari warned that AI may be the “final technology” shaping narratives, determining not just what people buy, but what they believe (Harari, WEF 2020).
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Case study: When enterprises lose sovereignty
Consider financial markets. High-frequency trading algorithms, once hailed as efficient, now dominate economies. The 2010 “Flash Crash” showed how machine-driven trades could erase a trillion dollars in minutes—before humans could react. Lesson: Delegation without transparency magnifies systemic risk.
Social media offers another example. Enterprises that relied on Facebook Pages for outreach found themselves hostage to algorithm changes that cut reach overnight. Dependency on opaque systems made them fragile. AI ecosystems threaten to replicate this on a broader scale. Without fixed protocols, organizations risk losing control of their thinking infrastructure.
Future outlook: multi-agent ecosystems on-chain
We are heading toward multi-agent ecosystems—swarms of AI agents negotiating, trading, and executing. Imagine procurement run by agents selecting suppliers, negotiating terms, and signing contracts. Convenience will be high, but so will risk. Whose rules govern these interactions? Who ensures accountability when an agent’s “optimization” misaligns with priorities?
This is where blockchain integration becomes essential. By anchoring agent interactions on-chain, organizations gain a record of decisions made and constraints applied. Smart contracts can enforce compliance, while immutable records deter manipulation. The convergence of AI and blockchain will determine whether enterprises preserve sovereignty or slide into cognitive servitude.
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The broader cultural dimension
Culture, as I’ve argued elsewhere (just search me on the web), is extended cognition—the collective memory and meaning system of a group. If cognitive consumerism erodes discernment at the individual level, it risks fragmenting culture at the collective level.
This is not theoretical. Social platforms already shape how billions perceive truth. Generative AI could accelerate this fragmentation by producing infinite tailored realities, leaving organizations struggling to maintain cultural coherence.
Historically, religion functioned as a cultural anchor, providing coherence through shared rituals and narratives. Today, blockchain has the potential to serve as a secular counterpart: a substrate for collective memory that resists tampering.
Closing insight
Classic consumerism sold us things. Cognitive consumerism risks selling us ourselves.
To resist, enterprises need more than clever tools—they need protocols, stacks, and systems that safeguard sovereignty at the cognitive layer.
Explore how to design your stack with sovereignty in mind. The future depends on it.
In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.
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Watch: AI is a double-edged sword
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Source: https://coingeek.com/cognitive-consumerism-ai-risks-turn-us-into-passive-thinkers/
