“What ingredients are necessary for a lasagne”, “whats 14 times 2?”, “what should I get my boyfriend for Christmas”. Thinking used to be unavoidable. Now it is optional.
Obviously, these aren’t hard questions and they never were. But answering them used to require something we no longer consider essential: thinking. Thinking used to be unavoidable. Now it is optional. And honestly, we are all guilty. A grocery list. A work email. A birthday card for your mom. Small tasks that are easily done, yet we no longer do them ourselves. Not out of necessity, but because it feels easier to ask a machine than to pause long enough to form a coherent thought. The result is not just the use of artificial intelligence, but a growing dependence on it in ways that quietly replace thinking itself.
We’re not just using artificial intelligence. We’re leaning on it. Heavily. For things that once kept our minds awake. This feeling is not imagined. To better understand it, MIT put it to the test. Researchers placed 54 students on EEG monitors while they wrote essays. Some were allowed to use AI, while others relied solely on their own skills. The AI-assisted essays were generally fine—grammatically correct and structurally sound. Yet when teachers evaluated them, they described them as empty. More concerning was what followed. When students were asked about what they had written, they could not remember it. Not a single quote.
This should scare us. Because the brain is not a cloud storage system. It’s a muscle. Use it, it strengthens. Stop using it, it softens. And what we’re seeing now isn’t a collapse of intelligence, but a collapse of practice…We are becoming increasingly thinking-lazy and less capable of connecting ideas, solving problems, or navigating social situations. These are not failures of intelligence, but of human life skills.
So where did this shift begin? Ancient Rome had no Google. No internet. No instant answers. People relied on memory, reasoning, and discussion. Today, we appear smarter because information is everywhere. Yet a gap has emerged between knowledge and understanding, between access and ability. We grew up with Google providing instant answers, changing how we approach thinking itself. Instead of sitting with uncertainty or working through mistakes, we turn to AI to finish the job for us.
The most alarming part is easy to overlook. When a fully grown adult uses ChatGPT for something small, it may slightly weaken their thinking, but it does not fundamentally change how their brain works. Their cognitive framework is already formed. The real issue is that AI is also being used by children whose brains are still developing.
What happens to originality? To be patient? To the uncomfortable but necessary process of not knowing? We’re forgetting how to pause. How to be confused. How to think badly before thinking well. Friction is disappearing. Depth is disappearing with it. Fluency is mistaken for intelligence. Confidence is mistaken for understanding. We’re becoming well-spoken parrots.
Before this turns into a rant against ChatGPT, one thing must be clear: AI is not inherently bad. It can be incredibly powerful, especially in moments of crisis, learning, or accessibility. The danger is not the tool itself, but how easily we hand over our cognitive responsibility. AI should assist thinking, not replace it. Because when we stop exercising the mind, we should not be surprised when it grows weak. And maybe that’s the real risk of artificial intelligence. Not that it becomes smarter than us, but that we quietly decide we don’t need to think at all.