Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus arxiv.org
A paper from Solé, Ruffini, Levin, Krakauer and others borrowing epidemiology to model LLM adoption. Users move between three states: independent, coupled, and persistently dependent, with social transmission pushing people towards dependence and recovery pulling them back.
The claim that makes it more than a metaphor is nonlinearity. Their model produces tipping points, so small increases in adoption can trigger rapid shifts towards persistent dependence, with abrupt losses of cognitive competence rather than gradual ones. Collective reinforcement can then lock a society in.
The useful half is the framing of prevention, which they call cognitive immunization: the levers are reducing transmission and keeping the transition reversible. Treat this as a model rather than a measurement, since the dynamics come from the chosen equations rather than from observed populations. The population-level version of cognitive debt, and a formal model for what cognitive surrender describes one person at a time.