Copilots and agentic AI are not only changing how we work as software engineers, but also how we think. In this session, we look beyond productivity claims and tool comparisons, and focus on the psychological side of AI Augmented Engineering. What happens to your attention, working memory, critical thinking, and mental models when AI starts to take over more of the writing, searching, and thinking?

In this talk, we explore why working with AI often feels faster and smoother, while at the same time creating new kinds of mental friction. As AI increasingly provides output, suggestions, and next steps, the role of the engineer shifts: from building things yourself to evaluating, choosing, checking, and steering. This directly affects focus, understanding, learning, debugging, and keeping track of context. Using recognizable real-world situations, we look at where AI creates mental space, where it adds cognitive load, and what this means for how engineers develop expertise.

This session gives you a practical psychological framework to use AI more consciously and effectively in your daily work. You’ll learn how to recognize when AI improves speed, focus, and mental space, when it quietly adds extra cognitive load, and how to deal with that in a smart way. This helps you get more out of copilots and agents, without losing sharpness, understanding, and control, as AI becomes an increasingly essential part of engineering.