The Dual-System Challenge: Human Psychological Evolution in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated into activities involving information processing, communication, learning, creativity, reasoning, and decision-making. This development introduces a distinctive challenge because increasingly capable artificial systems are being incorporated into environments inhabited by human beings whose psychological architecture developed through evolutionary processes under substantially different environmental conditions. This paper proposes the Dual-System Challenge, a conceptual framework for examining the increasingly coupled relationship between two systems: the human biological-psychological system, consisting of cognitive, emotional, motivational, social, and epistemic mechanisms; and the external artificial-technological system, consisting of artificial intelligence and associated computational infrastructures. The central argument is not that these systems are equivalent, nor that technological development is inherently harmful. Rather, the paper argues that the consequences of increasingly capable artificial systems cannot be adequately understood without considering the characteristics of the human psychological system interacting with them. The framework extends the author's previous work on Human–AI Convolution, which conceptualized increasingly reciprocal interaction between human cognition and artificial intelligence. The present paper extends that concept from individual cognitive interaction toward a broader philosophical and psychological framework. It examines four interconnected mechanisms: cognitive augmentation and substitution, human–AI feedback loops, epistemic dependence and AI-mediated testimony, and psychological adaptation to rapidly changing technological environments. Existing research provides partial empirical support for these mechanisms, while also demonstrating substantial heterogeneity in human–AI interaction and collaboration. On this basis, the paper proposes the Dual-System Regulation Thesis: responsible technological civilization requires simultaneous attention to the governance of artificial systems and the development of human psychological, cognitive, ethical, and epistemic capacities. The Dual-System Challenge is presented as a conceptual and research framework rather than an empirically validated unified theory. Its principal contribution is to formulate a set of mechanisms and questions that can be subjected to future empirical investigation.