We are currently living through a cataclysmic shift in human consciousness driven by AI. Unlike past technological advances that extended human agency, like the typewriter or the mobile phone… AI is designed to augment or replace human agency, fundamentally altering how we process, store, and access information in our own minds… think on this… REMOVING HUMAN AGENCY… what are humans supposed to actually (do)?
The Trap of “Cognitive Load” Reduction
The primary selling point of AI is that it makes life “easier” by reducing the mental effort required for complex tasks. However, this convenience comes with a massive cognitive debt… actually:
Brain Atrophy: The brain functions like a muscle; when you outsource reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity to a machine, your intellect atrophies. - WE MUST STILL PROCESS, ANALYZE, AND PRODUCE TO GROW OUR BRAINS.
Decreased IQ: Early data suggests that heavy reliance on AI for writing, reading, and decision-making results in a widespread decline in learning skills and intelligence. - If you read depressing reports on the most recent generation and intelligence it’s not looking good…
The “Google Effect” on Steroids: While the internet previously made us less likely to remember facts we could find online, AI ensures that knowledge never even touches the brain in the first place. - As someone between worlds, this will not effect me… but for those native to the AI space… how mushy will their brains be?
The Illusion of Competence
Many users believe AI “helps” them with tasks like reading comprehension or brainstorming. The reality is often a generalized illusion of knowledge.
Humans end up with a pseudo-literacy, they don’t actually COMPREHEND… and never flex their brain muscles…
The most dangerous long-term effect of AI is the erosion of our ability to distinguish between reality and unreality. Need we talk about how impossible it is to distinguish real from fake?… the bigger fear is passive acceptance of algorithmic decisions… WHICH SHAPE OUR REALITY…
Choosing the “Harder Path”
The solution is not policy, but individual choice. To preserve your humanity and intellect, you must embrace difficulty… and I’d go even prescriptive here:
Read and Write: True growth for our meat-sack bodies is still reading and writing… use agents to help you write and go deeper in your writing and understanding.
Embrace AI: As I help leaders get on-boarded to using agents, it (can be) a frustrating exercise in how important it is to ‘train agents' over time. The more you (do) with the tool, the more fluent you become… the more enabled you become.
AI is not just a tool; it is a gift of habit-forming passivity that leads to intellectual, emotional, and moral mediocrity if just used as input-output… If you allow a machine to do your thinking, you are reducing yourself to something less than human.
The path forward requires a return to lived experience and the refusal to let a machine act as your surrogate for reality while embracing the technology as the most important tool of your lifetime to wield.
The balance is real.
All the best,
ps