System 0 Thinking

AI systems are moving upstream, operating at a layer before conscious thought begins. Giuseppe Riva calls this System 0, a cognitive infrastructure that filters, ranks and constructs representations before they reach your awareness. This isn’t a new phenomenon but (agentic) AI adds a deeper dimension. The filtering happens to the problem space itself, not just the solutions. An AI agent processes information to achieve a specific goal. • It selects and organises, and limits what you have access to. • By the time you interact with it, the system has already filtered suggestions and actions to inform what you treat as important. This could mean a significant loss of epistemic agency, the capacity to decide what counts as relevant. Once a decision moves into infrastructure, it becomes invisible. This operates at individual, collective, and societal levels. To make this visible, Riva proposes infrastructure breakdown methodologies. • Pick a task where you rely on an AI and remove it. What do you search for? What patterns do you notice? What conclusions do you reach? • Then reintroduce the tool and compare. Its gaps show where the machine has been deciding for you. Paper: Invisible Architectures of Thought: Toward a New Science of AI as Cognitive Infrastructure https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22893