AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid: A Look at What We're Losing

AI is part of daily life now, but what happens when we let machines handle our thinking? Are we losing more?

Introduction: The Unseen Consequence of AI Dependence

Artificial intelligence, once the stuff of futuristic dreams, has now become embedded in our daily routines. From drafting emails to generating creative content, AI tools like ChatGPT are presented as shortcuts to productivity and intelligence. The promise is clear: technology will make us smarter, more efficient, and more capable. But as we lean more heavily on these digital crutches, an unsettling question arises: Is AI really making us smarter, or is it quietly dumbing us down?

We’re at a crossroads. As AI increasingly handles the cognitive load, are we sacrificing our own intellectual faculties in exchange for convenience? The costs may not be immediately visible, but the impact on our minds and our capacity for critical thought could be profound.

The Illusion of Efficiency: Sacrificing Process for Speed

At its core, the promise of AI is efficiency. How many times have we stared at a blank page, ready to dive into research, only to type a quick query into ChatGPT, asking for an article summary? Within seconds, we have a neat, digestible version of the content. No need to read through pages of dense text. No need to struggle with complex ideas. The result is quick and polished but at what cost?

AI gives us the illusion of productivity, but what it’s really doing is stripping away the very process that makes us better at what we do.

Real-Life Example: At a university in New York, a survey of students revealed that many were using AI to generate essays and reports. While it saved them hours of work, they confessed to struggling when it came to editing and refining their thoughts. The absence of the grueling process of wrestling with material left their work lacking depth. They hadn’t developed their ideas—they’d let the machine do the thinking for them.

Cognitive Offloading: The Slow Erosion of Mental Muscles

There’s a term in psychology for what we’re experiencing: cognitive offloading. It’s the act of relying on external tools like our phones, calculators, and AI systems—to handle tasks that once required mental effort. Want to know the time? Look at your phone. Need a contact number? Search for it. Want to write a message or an email? Let AI do the job.

But here’s the rub: the more we offload mental tasks to AI, the less we exercise our brains. It’s like going to the gym and using machines to do all the work. You might get by, but your muscles and your mind will grow weaker.

Example: Consider someone who relies on AI for everything from emails to brainstorming ideas. Over time, they stop remembering key facts, people’s names, and even simple details like phone numbers. They’ve grown so reliant on technology that it’s harder for them to navigate the world without it. The mind that once functioned independently is now struggling to keep up.

The Myth of AI Intelligence: It Mimics, It Doesn’t Think

One of the most pervasive myths about AI is that it’s "smart." If you ask ChatGPT for an answer, it seems to process information, weigh factors, and arrive at a conclusion. In reality, AI doesn’t think at all. It doesn’t reason, innovate, or create  simply pulls data from an enormous database of human knowledge and reorganizes it into something that appears coherent. A journalist uses AI to summarize government reports. The summaries are efficient, but often miss key details that shift the meaning or tone of the document. AI is fast, but it lacks the nuance and insight of human reasoning. It’s a perfect example of efficiency over depth, where the end product might be neat but lacks the soul and substance that only human minds can provide.

What Are We Losing? The Dangers of Shallow Thinking

With AI, we’ve sacrificed deep work for fast work. No longer do we spend hours wrestling with an essay, refining our ideas, or trying to come up with the perfect phrase. Instead, we’ve become accustomed to spitting out content and moving on. But is this real progress?

Imagine an artist who, instead of sketching by hand, now uses AI to generate a basic outline for their drawing. Sure, it’s faster—but it’s also devoid of the creative struggles that lead to innovation. The trial and error, the mistakes, and the happy accidents are lost in the pursuit of efficiency. In the music industry, critics are beginning to raise concerns about AI-generated songs. While catchy, these tracks tend to sound eerily similar to each other, lacking the raw emotion and originality of music made by human hands. The struggle, the pain, and the creativity are stripped away in favor of efficiency. In the end, what we gain in speed, we lose in soul.

The Echo Chamber of AI: Reinforcing Familiarity, Stifling Innovation

Perhaps one of the most insidious effects of AI is the way it reinforces pre-existing ideas. Because AI is trained on existing data, it tends to repeat patterns it has already learned. While this might sound benign, it fosters intellectual stagnation. The more we rely on AI, the less likely we are to encounter something new and challenging.

Example: A filmmaker using AI to write a script for a short film might find that the AI-generated plot is strikingly similar to dozens of other films they’ve seen before. The story is predictable, safe, and unoriginal. Rather than pushing boundaries and challenging norms, the AI simply repeats what’s already been done.

The Rise of AI-Generated Videos and the Threat to Older Generations

One of the most concerning developments in AI technology is the rise of deep fakes—hyper-realistic videos that manipulate or fabricate images and voices. While these videos are often used for entertainment or pranks, they pose a grave threat, particularly for older adults who may not have the technological literacy to spot these deceptions.

Older generations are particularly vulnerable to the manipulation of deep fake videos, which can be used to spread misinformation, deceive people into believing false statements, and even perpetrate financial fraud.

Real-Life Example: In 2020, the BBC reported an alarming rise in deep fake scams targeting the elderly. One notable case involved a fraudster impersonating a woman’s daughter through deep fake technology, claiming she’d been in a car accident and urgently needed money. The elderly woman, believing the voice on the phone, sent thousands of pounds to the scammer. The emotional distress caused by these types of deceptions is severe, and the consequences are real.

Conclusion: The Cognitive Cost of Convenience

AI promises efficiency and ease, but at what cost? We’ve traded the slow, often painful process of critical thinking for the speed of automation. But in doing so, we risk losing the very things that make us human—our creativity, our ability to think deeply, and our capacity to engage with the world around us.

As AI continues to evolve, it’s important to ask ourselves: What are we sacrificing in our pursuit of convenience? The next time you reach for that AI-generated answer, consider what’s at stake. Are we becoming smarter, or are we letting AI do the thinking for us?

In a world obsessed with speed, maybe the real question is whether the journey is worth more than the destination.