[2609.03344] Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus

Ricard Solé and eight co-authors, among them David Krakauer and Michael Levin, model the spread of large language model use as a contagion: users move between uncoupled, coupled and persistently dependent states through social transmission, recovery and collective reinforcement. In the model, once a critical threshold is crossed, small increases in adoption can tip a population into persistent dependence "with abrupt losses in cognitive competence", and the same framework identifies conditions for "cognitive immunization": reducing transmission and making dependence easier to reverse. The paper is a theoretical model; it measures no one's competence.

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