How I realize that Ai makes me stupid - and what I do now

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Sam Schechner, The Wall Street Journal 6 min Read 03 Apr 2025, 09:41 PM IST After years of building my ability to articulate nuanced ideas in French, AI made this work optional. (Illustration: Jason Schneider) Summary supporters of the new technology say it will liberate us to be creative, but studies show that the avoidance of spiritual effort can cause your brain to atrophy. I first suspected that artificial intelligence ate my brain while writing “Ne -mail about my son’s basketball coach. I wanted to complain at the local REC Center – in French – that the coach detained classes. As a US reporter living in Paris, I spoke French quite well, but the task was still a pain. I described the situation in English to Chatgpt. Within seconds, the bot cried out a French e -mail that both sounded determined and polite. I changed and sent a few words. I soon instructed Chatgpt to set up complex French e -mails to my children’s school. I asked it to summarize long French financial documents. I even started asking it to leave comfortable WhatsApp messages to French friends, emojis and all. After years of building up my ability to articulate nuanced ideas in French, AI made this work optional. I felt that my brain was getting a little rust. I was surprised to understand myself for the right words to ask a friend for a favor above text. But life is busy. Why not choose the easy path? AI developers have promised that their tools will free people from the foolishness of recurrent brain car labor. It will disconnect our minds to think big. It will give us room to be more creative. But what if the liberation of our minds actually makes them lazy and weak? “If you don’t use it, it starts to go away,” said Robert Sternberg, a professor at the University of Cornell. Sternberg, who studies human creativity and intelligence, argues that AI has already taken a toll on both. Smartphones are blamed for what some researchers call ‘digital dementia’. In the study after study, scientists showed that people who regularly rely on digital aid for some tasks may lose the ability to do so alone. The more we use GPS, the worse we get to find on our own. The more we rely on our stored contacts, the less likely we are to know the phone numbers of close friends or even our spouse. Most of us are not worried about no longer learning phone numbers, if we are old enough to ever learn them. But what happens when our core parts of our thinking start to outsource a machine? Like understanding a text well enough to summarize it. Or to find the words that best express a thought. Is there a way to use this new AI tool without becoming my brain mushroom? Like AI itself, research on its cognitive effects is in its infancy, but early results are ominous. In a study published in the journal associations in January, it was found that regular use of AI instruments such as chatgpt was correlated with reduced critical thinking, especially among younger users. In a new survey among knowledge workers, Microsoft researchers found that those with more confidence in generative AI have less critical thinking when they use it. “Tools like GPS and generative AI make us cognitively lazy,” said Louisa Dahmani, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who in 2020 showed that the usual use of GPS navigation reduces a spatial memory of a person. “Although it is possible to use these instruments in a thoughtful way, I think most of us will take the path of least resistance,” she told me. The acceptance of brain work instruments – a process called cognitive download – was largely an engine of human progress. Since Sumerians have scratched their debt in clay tablets, people have been using stone, papyrus and paper to contract their memories and beliefs of everything from statements to shopping list. The opportunities for cognitive download have multiplied lately. Paper calendars have long held appointments; Digital people send alerts when this happens. Calculators add numbers; Excel patches balance the entire budgets. Generative AI promises to further increase our productivity. Workers are increasingly using it to write emails, meetings or even-shhh-summarize that way too long documents that your boss sends. By the end of last year, about a quarter of all corporate press releases were probably written with AI assistance, according to a pre -pressure newspaper led by Stanford Ph.D. Students. But these short -term gain can have long -term costs. George Roche, co-founder of Bindbridge, an Ai molecular discovery art, told me that he uploaded several scientific articles a day, on topics from botany to chemistry, to an Ai-Chatbot. It was a blessing through which Roche could keep up to date with much more research than he could before. Yet this comfort began to bother him. “I deliver my synthesis of information,” Roche told me. “Am I going to lose that ability? Am I going to get less sharp? ‘ Hemant Taneja, CEO of the Silicon Valley Venture-Capital firm General Catalyst, who invested in AI businesses, including Anthropic and Mistral AI, admits that although AI technology offers real benefits, it can also jeopardize our thinking skills. “Our ability to ask the right questions will weaken if we don’t practice,” Taneja said. These risks can be greater for young people if they start to download AI cognitive skills that they have not yet honed for themselves. Yes, some studies show that AI tutors can help students if they are well used. But a Wharton school study last year found that math students who were in high school who studied with an Ai-Chatbot who were willing to provide answers to math problems sought a group of bone-free students on the AI-free final exam. “There is a possible cyberpunk -dystopian future where we get stupid and computers do all the thinking,” Richard ruled, a philosopher of technology at Tilberg University in the Netherlands, told me. Let’s not panic yet. People have a history of issuing serious predictions about new technologies that were later incorrect. More than 2400 years ago, Socrates reportedly suggested that the writing of self ‘forgetfulness would yield in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.’ However, it would be difficult to suggest that the benefits of writing and reading do not outweigh the costs. Since then, new technologies, from the printing press to the knitwear to the telegraph, have all elicited objections to its impact on individuals and society – with different degrees of conditions. But there is no stop progress. What do scientists we need to do to keep our minds with the AI ​​future on our threshold? The basic principle is to use or lose it. Writing is a great way to practice thinking and reasoning, precisely because it is difficult. “The question is what skills do we think are important and what skills we want to give up our tools,” said Hamsa Bastani, a professor at the Wharton school and a author of the study on the effects of AI at math students at high school. Bastani told me that she was using AI to encode, but made sure she checked the work and also did some of her own coding. “It’s like forcing yourself to take the stairs instead of taking the elevator.” Mark Maitland, a senior partner at consultant firm Simon-Kucher, said although his staff is now using ai-transcripts from meetings, he also asks his team to take handwritten notes, given research that taking notes lead to better recall. “It’s easy to get lazy if you think something else is doing for you,” Maitland told me. I am now also leaning in my own life. This means that I turn myself off the GPS in unknown places. I take handwritten notes if I want to remember something. I also resist the demands of my children to ask Chatgpt for a made -up story and encourage them to create their own instead. I even started writing my own French language emails and WhatsApp messages again. At least most of the time. I’m still busy. Sam Schechner is a technological reporter in the Wall Street Journal’s Paris Bureau. Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #kantian Intelligence Munt Specialties