Where are we truly headed with AI?

How we risk diluting our ability to think with AI

There is no question that AI, as with many technological advances that human beings have invented, can be an asset. Savvy practitioners of their craft — whether they are programmers, marketing professionals, or researchers — have highlighted AI's usefulness in enabling them to perform tasks efficiently. Nonetheless, they also highlight the need for them to exercise their knowledge and experience to review the AI output with due diligence and modify it to further enhance its accuracy and quality.

But the sad reality is that, these days, AI is also enabling novices and learners to bypass the learning process of understanding their craft and developing the critical thinking and skills that could make them savvy practitioners by taking the shortcut of relying on AI to do the hard work for them. For how can they review the content if they lack the knowledge and experience to evaluate the AI content? Essentially, with AI, we are already paving the way for the next generation of leaders and practitioners, who have relinquished the human capabilities of analyzing, reflecting, and decision-making to AI.

So, even as I hear the voices of dissent among educators, writers, and copyeditors, whose domains have been significantly impacted by AI, I fear that we are only preaching to the choir. For the vast majority of learners, who are happy to never have to think hard for themselves to write an essay, the awakening may never come. How could you know what you are missing out on when you are content to remain in oblivious slumber?

What we have once feared would come true about AI — that we would relinquish our autonomy and decision-making ability — isn’t about the advances of AI. It is really about where we are headed as a human race in our willing surrender to what makes us human to AI.