Navigation is the process of determining one’s position and defining the optimal route to a destination, whether this takes place in the physical or the digital realm.

As humans, we navigate every day, both when trying to cross an intersection and when opening any website or application. Just as we once used maps or a compass to get from point A to point B, today we use website navigation to move through digital spaces with ease. Increasingly, however, we are handing over this digital compass to an invisible guide: AI.This guide leads us along the fastest and most optimized route to our goal, such as obtaining information. At the same time, it does not reveal the structure of the terrain we traverse in order to find it. AI makes it so that, in a sense, we no longer have to search for information; it simply comes to us.

In applications built on conversational models, navigation still takes place, but its conductor is no longer the user. Instead, it is an invisible system. The interface ceases to be a map that allows us to read our position and becomes genie in a bottle to whom we direct our wishes. This process assumes extreme optimization in order to accelerate the customer journey and maximize profits. Yet hiding the path and the act of navigation comes at a serious cost to the user. The ability to navigate is essential not only for moving through physical terrain.It is a fundamental human practice and a cognitive operation. When a system performs these operations for us, we incur a certain kind of debt. Research shows that we most often repay it with our ability to remember and with our sense of authorship over our own thoughts.

At the same time, by using such tools, we lose the possibility of wandering and of unexpected discoveries that are inherent to traditional exploration. We risk losing skills such as comparing and selecting the better option or organizing information, which are the foundations of critical thinking. At the same time, we gain access to immense convenience and significantly faster problem-solving.The dilemma was aptly described by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who referred to it as pharmakon. Every technology is both a remedy and a poison. AI optimizes and accelerates while simultaneously weakening some of our cognitive abilities and making us dependent on it. The question is: what will be the next pharmakon after AI? The solution is certainly not to reject technology or to embrace technophobia. We must discover a new paradigm for designing interfaces and navigating the digital world.