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AI Isn't Making Us Dumb. Getting It To Do Everything, Is.

AI Does Not Make Us Dumb. Letting It Do Everything, Does.

We're all using ChatGPT to write emails, summarize concepts, readings, generate code, draft proposals, plan our strategies and unfortunately, make our decisions. It is fast, productive, impressive, and it works. And somewhere in the middle of all of that — we are slowly losing our ability to think, plan, strategize and decide.

A few years ago, getting AI to write something for you felt like cheating. Today it feels irresponsible not to use it. The shift happened fast — and quietly, something else shifted with it.

AI is not making us dumb. But handing it everything? including the parts that make us human?. And the fix is not to stop using it. It is to stay in the driver's seat while it does the heavy lifting.

When you let something else do your thinking, you slowly lose the ability to think.

We Are Outsourcing More Than We Realise

Think about what a typical day looks like now. A student gets a long reading assignment — asks AI for a summary. A developer hits a tricky problem — asks AI for the solution, copies it, moves on. A content writer needs five post captions — generates all five, picks the best one, publishes. A manager needs to make a decision — asks AI to weigh the options. A founder needs to design a product flow — asks AI to map it out.

None of this is wrong on its own. AI summaries save time. Generated code unblocks you. Having options laid out helps you decide. This is exactly what the tool is for.

But here is what's also happening. The student never wrestled with the text. The developer never sat with the problem long enough to build intuition about it. The content writer never found their own voice in those captions. The manager never developed the judgment that comes from working through a hard call. The founder never built the design sense that only comes from making and breaking things yourself.

Speed went up. The underlying capability quietly stayed flat — or went backwards.

The Muscle You Stop Using

Expression is a muscle. So is judgment, and the ability to sit with a hard problem and think through. These things do not disappear overnight. They fade slowly, in the background, while everything on the surface looks fine.

The person who asks AI to write all their emails eventually finds it harder to write one themselves. The developer who always reaches for generated code starts losing the ability to design the logic. The student who outsources their reading stops being able to form an argument.

None of them did anything dramatic. They just chose the easier option, consistently, over time. And the muscle forgot what it was supposed to do.

Use It to Go Faster. Not to Skip the Work That Grows You.

AI is a vehicle. A powerful one. But a vehicle needs a driver — someone who knows the destination, controls the direction, and makes the calls along the way.

The distinction is small but it matters: are you using AI to do something faster, or to avoid doing it at all? Generating ten caption options and rewriting the best one in your own voice is using it well. Publishing all ten without touching them is skipping the part where you were supposed to grow.

A practical version of this: write one thing yourself every day — an email, a post, a paragraph — then ask AI to find the weaknesses, reason, counter question, learn and improve. Now, you get the speed and you also get better. That is the balance.

What I did with this realization

I noticed this pattern in my life, in two places, specifically.

First, social media. I was getting AI to write my descriptions. One day I stopped and asked it to help me write one — then asking it to find weaknesses, pushed back, questioned my reasoning. I sometimes aligned with it, disagreed other times. Gradually I was teaching it my tone, but more importantly, I was finding my tone. The time it took me to write something good, kept shrinking. I was getting faster because I was getting better as well.

Second, designing Iqra. I used to ask AI to design UI elements, lay out flows, make design calls. Then I read about Emotional design. I read Hooked, explored emotional design, sat with the ideas long enough to form my own opinions. Then I came back to AI — not to get answers, but to join the dots in my own head. I countered, asked questions, shared half-formed thoughts, refined what it proposed. When everything aligned, I asked it to put together a document. That document still guides every design decision I make in Iqra today.

In both cases, AI did not slow me down. But I stayed in the seat where the thinking happened. And that made all the difference.

AI is one of the most useful things we have ever had access to. The question is whether we are using it to become more capable — or to avoid becoming capable at all.

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