Aging Minds, Accelerating Machines

Rethinking AI and Cognitive Decline

We often talk about AI as a competitor to human intelligence. But what if it’s not just replacing human brilliance—but quietly compensating for our natural decline?

Recent research suggests that in cognitively demanding professions, mental performance often begins to plateau or subtly decline in our 30s and 40s. Processing speed, working memory, learning agility—these aren’t just abstract traits. They are the day-to-day fuel of software developers, consultants, doctors, strategists. And ironically, they often start fading precisely when people reach the peak of their financial and professional obligations.

Now layer in AI.

If cognitive decline in knowledge work begins earlier than we think, then AI isn’t just competing with humans at their peak. It’s replacing humans whose abilities may already be waning—often without acknowledgment, support, or structural compassion. The software engineer in their 40s, struggling to keep up with the latest framework, might find Copilot isn’t a threat but a lifeline. But that doesn’t change the market logic: performance is slipping, and the machine doesn’t sleep.

This creates a cruel paradox: people are asked to pivot careers, retrain, and compete in the most cognitively taxing ways precisely when their biology resists rapid adaptation the most. And they’re doing it under peak financial strain—mortgages, tuition, aging parents, looming retirement. AI becomes a pressure multiplier rather than a liberator.

But this isn’t just a private sector issue. Consider this: the average age in the U.S. Senate is 65. Supreme Court justices often serve into their 80s. Our last presidential election was contested between two men in their late 70s. In an era where we readily discuss cognitive thresholds for pilots, doctors, and even developers, we remain eerily silent about those making trillion-dollar decisions, regulating AI, and shaping the economy of the future.

Unlike the coder with Copilot, our aging political class often operates without feedback loops, performance metrics, or term limits. Institutional power protects them from the consequences of cognitive decline. And yet they are the ones steering irreversible decisions about automation, climate, and labor—decisions that will define the lives of generations below them.

To point this out isn’t ageism. Ageism is pretending decline doesn’t exist while forcing people to stay in roles unsuited to their current capabilities. Ageism is denying dignified transitions or legacy-bearing positions to those who have spent decades in service. Recognizing the biological realities of aging—including the strengths that come with it—should be part of redesigning our institutions, not silencing critique.

The deeper question isn’t just whether AI is getting smarter. It’s whether we’re automating now because we secretly know we’re getting slower.

If so, then we need to ask: who gets compassion when the mind falters? Who gets replaced? And who gets to make the call?

Because if AI is the future, we can’t afford to build it on a denial of the present.