Have you not run into trouble when your phone is dead but you have to contact someone? I have, it's frustrating. Thankfully I remember my partners number, though its the only one these days.

I had to maintain a little physical phone book because, while I can memorize 10 people’s numbers, I cant memorize 25, 50, 100. Not having that with me when I needed it, or if you lost it and had no backup, was far less convenient than today. It feels like this is a case of magnifying a minor, rare modern inconvenience and ignoring all the huge inconveniences of the past in favor of a super narrow case where it was debatably “better”.

These things are not mutually exclusive. Remembering numbers didn't hinder our ability to remember our contacts' names.

We don't know how brain exactly works, but I don't think we can now do some things better just because we are not using another function of our brains anymore.

(not op) for me its a matter of dependency. great, as long as i have my phone I can just ask siri to call my sister, but if I need to use someone else's phone because mines lost or dead, well, how am I going to do that?

Same as AI. Cool it makes you 5x as efficient at your job. But after a decade of using it, can you got back to 1x efficiency without it? Or are you just making the highly optimistic leap that you will retain access to the tech in perpetuity.