What Steven Johnson thinks about LLMs

@steven-johnson · 16 positions · On ppll ↗

Non-fiction writer, podcaster and occasional TV host. Author of thirteen books including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, host of the PBS series How We Got To Now, and author of the Adjacent Possible newsletter on innovation.

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Only Steven Johnson on LLMs. See everyone on LLMs

1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Steven Johnson has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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1. 16 Jul 2026

   Our readingThe external tools people use to reason, remember and calculate — including chatting with an LLM — are genuine extensions of the human mind, not just aids to it.

   Their wordsthe external tools that we use to help us reason, remember, associate, calculate-from counting on our fingers to chatting with an advanced LLM-should be properly understood as extensions of our own cognitive process.

   ↗Notebooks And The Extended Mindadjacentpossible.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece