Paper Models LLM Adoption as Cognitive Virus With Lock-In Risk — SkimNews
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- Luis F Seoane submitted "Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus" to arXiv on September 3, 2026, arguing that LLM use diffuses through populations and embeds itself in cognitive and cultural practices.
- The paper models user transitions across three states — uncoupled, coupled, and persistently dependent — using an epidemiological-style viral diffusion framework.
- Seoane's model shows the interplay between social transmission, recovery, and collective reinforcement can generate tipping points and technological lock-in.
- Once a critical adoption threshold is crossed, small further increases can trigger rapid population-level shifts toward persistent dependence with abrupt losses in cognitive competence, the paper finds.
- The same framework identifies conditions for what the authors call "cognitive immunization," based on reducing transmission and facilitating reversibility.
- The authors argue LLM adoption may involve nonlinear collective transitions with significant downstream consequences for cognitive autonomy.
Why it matters: By recasting LLM adoption through epidemiology-style dynamics, the paper offers a formal — not just rhetorical — case that diffusion can flip abruptly once a threshold is crossed, giving policymakers and educators a concrete lever (transmission rate and reversibility) to target before cognitive dependence becomes locked in.
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