Do not lean on me. Lean on the robot?

I try my best not to use the turn-by-turn navigation instructions from the smartphone.  In fact, preparations for a road trip include going to the local AAA office and picking up the relevant maps. Yes, the old-fashioned printed maps.

Will this practice of consulting with maps and figuring out directions go away as we humans begin to rely more and more on smartphones that direct us?

Technology is rapidly removing the "need" for many aspects of our lives.  Where will it all end?

There is something new in us not "needing" the old ways of knowing things.  Of course, even in the olden days, not all of us knew how to grow crops or fix the broken doors.  We got these done through cooperation:

We are constantly engaged in ‘memory transactions’ with a community of ‘memory partners’, through activities such as conversation, reading and writing. As members of these networks, most people no longer need to remember most things. This is not because that knowledge has been entirely forgotten or lost, but because someone or something else retains it. We just need to know whom to talk to, or where to go to look it up. The inherited talent for such cooperative behaviour is a gift from evolution, and it expands our effective memory capacity enormously.

We relied on fellow humans.

This time it is different.  We cooperate with "smart machines."

How then ought we to approach education?  Leave alone higher education for a second.  What should we teach kids in elementary schools?  How much should they be allowed to cooperate with smart machines? Without the smart machines helping them, will kids be way less smart than they seem?  Will that matter?

But in an educational setting, unlike collaborative chess or medical diagnostics, the student is not yet a content expert. The AI as know-it-all memory partner can easily become a crutch, while producing students who think they can walk on their own.

The changes are happening incredibly fast for us to collectively think through such issues.  Before we have thought about them and made a decision one way or another, a lot more changes happen.  We are forever behind when it comes to acting on these important issues that will profoundly affect the future.

My selfish answer is that it is not my problem anymore, given my age.  But, I worry. A lot.