Is AI training us to stop thinking?
I’m journaling, pen in hand, when I feel the pull to open ChatGPT. I haven’t finished my thought. Haven’t even heard what I actually think. But I’m already reaching for the shortcut.
Sometimes I use AI because I’m scared my real voice won’t be good enough. I wish I could call it efficiency. Honestly, it’s insecurity with better branding. I know this because I just tested it — I let AI rewrite an earlier draft of this piece. What came back was smoother, more cautious, more reasonable — and completely stripped of my voice. I had to fight to get myself back on the page.
This is how AI trains us to skip the thinking that makes us human — not by force, but by seduction. The research backs this up: when we expect information to be available externally, we stop encoding it internally.¹ The brain adapts, and there’s a documented pattern with automation: when a system is usually right, people stop paying attention. They defer. They miss mistakes.² The more helpful it feels, the more our own judgment disappears.
The Magic Remote
In Click (2006), Adam Sandler’s character gets a universal remote that fast-forwards through life’s inconvenient moments — arguments, exhausting dinners, bedtime routines. At first, it’s genius: save your energy for the important things. But the remote learns him. It skips ahead on its own, cutting out anything uncomfortable. Before he realizes it, he has fast-forwarded through intimacy, parenting, and entire years. He wakes up a stranger inside his own life.
Has AI become our magic remote? We are training ourselves to bypass the complicated process of sitting with uncertainty. The moment before clarity. The struggle for the right word. AI doesn’t just help us through discomfort — it offers to skip it entirely. And because it delivers something that sounds like us, we don’t notice that the thinking part has been edited out.
The Problem Is I Love It
My husband, Michael, refuses to write with AI. I used to push him; insist he was being stubborn. Then I understood: AI can write like him, polish his sentences, mimic his voice, but why would he outsource the part that gives him joy? He taught me what I keep forgetting: thinking, playing with words, struggling with the process — that’s how we stay in our own story. Isn’t that the point?
The question isn’t whether to use these tools. It’s whether we can use them without disappearing.
When I reach for AI before I’ve heard my own voice, I’m skipping self-knowledge and trading the messy process of figuring out what I think for something instant and impressive. I become a manager of outputs instead of a person wrestling with meaning. And it’s happening inside a larger ecosystem designed to smooth us out — platforms curate what we see, shaping increasingly segregated information diets,³ rewarding performance over authenticity.⁴ Then AI offers the next step: curate what comes out of your mind, too. Make it safer. Make it sound like you, but better.
Even optimistic research comes with warnings. One study found that AI improves individual creativity in writing but makes the resulting work more similar, reducing collective diversity.⁵ I might get a stronger paragraph. At the same time, we all slowly start to sound the same.
The Struggle Is the Point
A few days ago, my film professor gave us a scene-building exercise with sticky notes and a pen. I scribbled, rearranged, crossed out, started over. I could feel my brain working. It was exhilarating.
That’s when I understood: I don’t need to reject AI. I need to refuse to let it be my first voice. I want my messy paragraph first. My awkward sentence first. My honest draft, before the machine offers me the “better” one.
What’s at Stake
At the end of Click, the character sees what he’s built at the expense of his life. Those shortcuts looked clever, but they robbed him of what he thought he was building: a life worth living.
I don’t want to wake up a stranger inside my own mind. I don’t want my unedited thoughts to feel so unfamiliar that I stop trusting them.
So, I choose: one page a day. Not because it’s efficient, but because it keeps me tethered to my own thinking.
In a culture that worships speed and polish, this is the radical act: choosing the messy middle. Thinking our own thoughts first, even when AI offers a better-sounding version.
The temptation is powerful. But I choose to stay in the game — to play my life, not fast-forward through it. One page a day. By hand and by heart. Not because my unpolished thoughts are better, but because they’re mine. And I refuse to disappear.
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Footnotes
- Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776-778. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745
- Parasuraman, R., & Manzey, D. H. (2010). Complacency and bias in human use of automation: An attentional integration. Human Factors, 52(3), 381-410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720810376055
- Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298-320. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw006
- Haidt, J. (2022, April 11). Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
- Doshi, A. R., & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28), eadn5290. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn5290
References
Coraci, F. (Director). (2006). Click [Film]. Columbia Pictures.
Doshi, A. R., & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28), eadn5290. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn5290
Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298-320. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw006
Haidt, J. (2022, April 11). Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracytrust babel/629369/
Parasuraman, R., & Manzey, D. H. (2010). Complacency and bias in human use of automation: An attentional integration. Human Factors, 52(3), 381-410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720810376055
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776-778. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745
