Does AI Make Us Forget How to Think?

The answer is YES and NO.

Some years ago, I was reluctant to introduce or encourage AI to anyone I cared about. At first, I thought it’d just make them ‘lazy’. I didn’t want my sweet sister studying nursing to know how to use ChatGPT because that’d just make her use her brain less and then later go give some innocent old woman the wrong injection. I didn’t want to encourage AI use within the company because what if everyone suddenly became a dummy and started shipping nonsense AI-generated code?

It later dawned on me that I was just fooling myself.

My sister already knew how to use GPT better than I thought, and the employees all used it lowkey anyway. The earlier I tuned in, the better.

So… do I think AI makes us forget how to think?

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is no, which is weird because ‘no’ is shorter than ‘yes’. You see what I did there? 😉

Here’s what I think…

Let me start with the obvious: AI is definitely changing has definitely changed how we think, just as every tool humans have ever invented has changed how we think.

Calculators didn’t make us forget how to do arithmetics, but they did free us from long division so we could focus on understanding mathematical concepts.

Google Maps didn’t make us forget how to navigate, but it did free us from memorising routes or looking up at the sky to figure out the direction. (Actually google maps made me forget how to navigate but that’s not the topic for today).

Grammarly didn’t make us forget how to spell, but it did shift our focus from perfect spelling to clearer communication and better ideas.

So… No. AI might not make us “forget” how we think, but it can make us “shift” how we think.

How to use AI with your brain…

For the shift to be effective, I believe we need to understand the difference between collaborative assignment and dependency.

Example 1

Let’s say you have a debate…

If you write the argument and use AI to help structure it with extra contexts, you might actually learn something about argumentation and the best approach to take arguments from → That’s collaborative assignment.

But if you let AI generate the entire argument while your brain is on flight mode, you learn nothing. → That’s dependency.

Example 2

Let’s say you’re debugging code...

If you identify where the bug might be, form a hypothesis about what’s wrong, and use AI to help validate your thinking or suggest solutions you can evaluate, you’re getting better at debugging → That’s collaborative assignment.

But if you just dump your broken code and say “fix this” without trying to understand what was broken or how the fix works, you’ll likely write that same bug again next week. → That’s dependency.

In summary, using the collaborative assignment approach makes you change what you think about, rather than not thinking at all.

But also thinking of it from another angle…

Maybe we’re romanticising the kind of thinking we’re supposedly losing. A lot of what we consider “thinking” is actually just pattern matching, retrieving information from what we know, or applying known solutions. AI is extraordinary at this, and to be fair, most of us weren’t that great at “thinking” to begin with; we’re all idiots (haha).

The question is, if AI can think better than me, why would I need to think? In this case, perhaps we’re free to focus on other important things, like touching grass, feeding cats, and spending time with the fam.

To wrap up this epistle…

In my opinion, it’s neither black nor white; what we need is more intentionality about how we use AI.

But… If you’re one of those people who currently cannot function effectively if put in a room without AI and asked to “deliver”. Maybe it’s not a good position to be in. Or maybe it actually doesn’t matter.

And that, my friend, is why I said the answer is “yes” and “no”.