00:00Have you ever felt like you're on autopilot? Well, today we're going to dive into what that
00:04really means. We've got two incredible stories. One is a shocking true crime case where a man's
00:09body was awake, but his mind was completely gone. And then we're going to connect that
00:14to our everyday technology and how AI might be tricking our waking brains into a very similar
00:19state. It's a wild ride, so let's get into it. All right. Our story starts with a crime so
00:25bizarre it pushed the entire legal system to its breaking point. It really makes you question
00:29what it even means to be in control. So picture this. It's May 1987 in Canada. Investigators
00:37are looking at a guy named Kenneth Parks, who just confessed to a horrible crime. But the
00:42thing that made no sense, the part that had everyone scratching their heads, was that there
00:46was absolutely no motive. None. Now, to be fair, Parks was going through a tough time. He had
00:52a serious gambling problem, was deep in debt, and had just lost his job. But here's the
00:57thing. He loved his in-laws. He had a great relationship with them, even called them his
01:01gentle giants. So there was just no reason on earth for him to want to hurt them. And
01:05this is where it gets even stranger. After this brutal attack, he didn't run. He didn't
01:11try to hide. He drove straight to a police station with his hands completely mangled and bleeding
01:16and just calmly told them, I think I have just killed two people. He was totally confused
01:21and didn't even seem to feel any pain. Right. So his defense sounds like something out of
01:26a movie. Parks claimed he remembered nothing. Not the drive, not the attack, not a single
01:32thing. His lawyers argued something that sounded completely impossible. He did it all while
01:38he was fast asleep. And that was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? Could a person actually
01:43get up, find their keys, drive a car for over 20 kilometers, and commit a violent crime, all
01:50without their conscious brain being switched on? To figure that out, we have to look at
01:54the science.
01:55So what was actually going on inside Kenneth Parks' brain? Well, the answer isn't some
02:00paranormal mystery. It's a very real, though rare, sleep disorder called somnambulism. You
02:06and I know it as sleepwalking. You can think of sleepwalking as a glitch in the system. It's
02:13like the brain tries to wake up, but only some parts get the message. Certain systems come
02:17online, while the parts responsible for consciousness, for you being you, stay completely
02:22offline. You're stuck in this weird limbo between being awake and being asleep. And
02:27to really get that glitch, you have to understand that sleep isn't just one big block of
02:32unconsciousness. We're actually cycling through these different stages all night long, from
02:37light sleep, down into the really deep stuff, and then into REM sleep, which is where we dream.
02:42Okay, now this is the key detail that most people get wrong. Sleepwalking is not acting
02:47out your dreams. That's a myth. See, your dreams happen during REM sleep, when your brain is
02:52buzzing with activity, but your body is conveniently paralyzed, so you don't go running
02:56around. Sleepwalking happens in the total opposite stage, NREM stage three. That's our
03:01deepest, most profound sleep. Your conscious mind is shut down, but your body, your body is free to
03:07move. So let's put it simply. The pilot of the plane, your consciousness, your reasoning,
03:12your memory, is completely asleep at the controls. But the autopilot system, the primitive parts of
03:17your brain that handle learned movements like walking or driving, that part can wake up and
03:22take over. It's just running a program. And in the end, the science was so compelling that the jury
03:27actually acquitted Kenneth Park. Okay, so the Kenneth Park story is a terrifying look at an involuntary
03:34autopilot, right? His brain did it without his permission. But that brings up a really interesting
03:39question for the rest of us. What happens when we voluntarily choose to put our brains on autopilot,
03:44especially when we're wide awake? You know, this whole fear that new technology is going to make us
03:50mentally lazy, it is not new. Not at all. I mean, this is a pattern we see again and again. You go way
03:55back to ancient Greece, and Socrates was worried that the invention of writing would make people forget
04:00how to remember things. Flash forward to the 70s, everyone was panicked that calculators would mean no one
04:04could do basic math. And today, it's the exact same conversation, just about AI. We've all felt
04:10this, right? It's called the Google effect, or digital amnesia. I mean, think about it. How many
04:17of your friends' phone numbers do you actually know by heart anymore? Why would you? Your brain is smart,
04:22but it's also efficient. It says, why waste energy storing this fact when I can just store the location
04:28of the fact, you know, by remembering how to Google? And get this, this isn't just some psychological
04:34quirk. It has a real physical effect on your brain's structure. There was this famous study on
04:39London taxi drivers. Before GPS, they had to memorize this insane labyrinth of 25,000 streets.
04:46And when scientists scan their brains, they found their hippocampus, that's the part for memory and
04:51navigation, was significantly larger than average. Contrast that with people who just follow the dot
04:56on their phone. They don't exercise that part of the brain, and well, it shows. And that,
05:01of course, brings us to today, and to the single most powerful tool for outsourcing our thinking
05:06that humanity has ever invented, artificial intelligence. A recent study hooked students
05:13up to brain scanners while they were writing essays. And the results? Well, they were genuinely
05:18shocking. The students who wrote the essay using chat GPT showed way, way less brain activity. I mean,
05:25their brains essentially just went quiet. They were basically switched off compared to students who
05:29used Google or, you know, just their own brain. And it gets worse. It wasn't just that their brains
05:35were less active in the moment. The researchers found that over time, the students got lazier,
05:40just copying and pasting. And when they were asked later to explain what they had written,
05:45they couldn't. The information had never actually passed through their brain. They hadn't learned a
05:50thing because they never did the work. And that's the central paradox here, isn't it?
05:54Our brains are literally hardwired by evolution to save energy, do always find the shortcut,
06:00the path of least resistance. They're what scientists call cognitive misers. But the only
06:05way our brains actually learn and grow and get stronger is by doing the exact opposite. It needs
06:11to struggle. It needs that friction. So let's tie these two very different stories together. On one hand,
06:18you've got an unconscious sleepwalker from 1987. On the other, a student using AI today. What's the
06:24real connection between these two tails of a brain on autopilot? It really all comes down to that simple
06:30age-old principle. Our brain is like a muscle. That mental effort, whether you're navigating a new
06:35city or just trying to structure an essay, that isn't a bug. That is the feature. That's the workout
06:41that makes it stronger. You got to do the reps. When you boil it down, both stories are about the same
06:46thing. Flipping a switch from conscious effort to automatic mode. For Kenneth Parks, that switch
06:51was flipped by a bizarre neurological glitch with horrifying consequences. For us, in the age of AI,
06:58flipping that switch ourselves is becoming easier and more tempting every single day.
07:03And that's the critical question these new tools are forcing us all to ask ourselves.
07:08The convenience is amazing, no doubt. But with every effortless answer, there's a temptation to
07:13become cognitively lazy. And the choice we all have to make, whether to use these things as a tool to
07:18help us think, or as a crutch to think for us, that choice is going to define the future of our minds.
