I recently read some articles arguing that AI is making us dumber, and I’ve been thinking about it. The idea that a powerful tool designed to help us could actually be having the opposite effect is a bit unsettling. While I can see the argument, I also think it’s more complicated than a simple yes or no.

I agree with the core concern: the potential for overreliance. It’s becoming increasingly common to lean on AI for everything from brainstorming ideas to writing a quick email. While this can be a huge time-saver, it also means we’re using our own brains less. If we rely on AI to do all the heavy lifting such as researching, organizing thoughts, and even forming arguments, we risk losing our ability to do these things on our own. It’s like using a GPS to get everywhere. After a while, you may find yourself completely lost without it. We should instead use AI as a tool to enhance our own thinking, not replace it. We must maintain our own opinions and be willing to challenge and refine what the AI produces, rather than mindlessly following its lead.

This reminds me of a personal experience from my childhood. I had what’s commonly called a “lazy eye.” One eye could see much better than the other, and over time, my brain naturally started favoring the stronger eye, using it almost exclusively. This meant the connections to my weaker eye weren’t developing properly, and its vision remained poor. My doctor explained it simply: “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” To correct this, I had to wear a patch over my good eye, just like a pirate, forcing my brain to rely on the weaker one. It was frustrating at first, but slowly, with consistent effort, my “lazy” eye developed the necessary brain connections, and its vision improved significantly.

Using AI too much feels like only seeing out of my strong eye. If we constantly delegate critical thinking, problem-solving, and creative ideation to AI, we’re essentially patching over our own cognitive muscles. We’re preventing them from being exercised and developed. We might become incredibly efficient at prompting AI, but we could lose the fundamental skills required for independent thought, complex reasoning, and genuine insight. In a way, we risk becoming “blind” to developing these crucial human capabilities.

One of the saddest effects I’ve seen is the trend of people intentionally making mistakes or keeping mistakes in their writing to prove they aren’t a robot. The fear of being h for an AI is so widespread that it’s leading people to do things that go against the principles of good writing. We’re actively limiting our vocabulary and avoiding well-structured sentences just to appear more human. This doesn’t just Y our own work; it also changes how we view nicely written text. We start to see a beautifully crafted piece writing not as a sign of skill and effort, but as a potential red flag. It is iron that to prove our humanity, we’re sacrificing the very things that make human communication so rich and nuanced.

This fear is very real, especially when it comes to things like school assignments, where the consequences for using AI are severe. The thought of my own work being flagged as AI-generated is terrifying. But the solution isn’t to deliberately write poorly. This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem. As AI continues to evolve, it will almost certainly learn to mimic these “human” flaws, just as it has adapted to avoid other tells we’ve identified in its writing. We’ve seen it happen before; as we’ve learned to spot AI, it has learned to change its patterns. Relying on intentional errors is a losing game.

Ultimately, whether AI makes us “stupid” depends entirely on how we choose to use it. It’s not the tool itself that’s the problem, but our relationship with it. We must be thoughtful and deliberate in our use of AI, ensuring it serves us rather than the other way around. Let’s not let the fear of being seen as a robot make us sacrifice our ability to think, write, and communicate with clarity and purpose.