Are we on the way to being fools?

We were told that if we used the calculator too much, we'd never learn to add. Then came spell checkers. GPS devices. Password-recall apps. And little by little, without realizing it, we started delegating. Thinking, memorizing, even deciding… it wasn't necessary anymore. There were tools for that.

And now artificial intelligence has arrived.

Not to help you with a calculation. Not to correct a comma. To make decisions. To design ideas. To advise you on how to deal with a breakup. Or a loss. Or an existential crisis.

An MIT study, titled "The Effect of Language Models on Human Cognitive Processing," claims that intensive use of models like ChatGPT can reduce neural connectivity by up to 47% in tasks requiring complex thinking. In other words, we would think less, more superficially, and with less cognitive effort. Exaggeration? Maybe. But something similar was also said when calculators arrived, and they weren't so far off the mark: we haven't forgotten how to add, but we have stopped doing it.

The question is no longer whether AI can make us dumber. The question is when we started to think that thinking wasn't worth the effort. When we stopped seeing intellectual effort as a virtue and started seeing it as something we can delegate. According to a study by the Internet Institute at Oxford University, more and more people are using artificial intelligence as emotional support or a life compass. AI is consulted about personal decisions, moral dilemmas, even the meaning of life. It has become an existential rebound: What do I do with my life? What career do I choose? How do I get over this breakup?

But delegating thought doesn't just impoverish the mind. It also atrophies the will. Because deciding isn't just about reasoning: it's about accepting consequences, tolerating uncertainties, and making mistakes. And if we let an algorithm make those decisions for us, at what point do we stop being individuals and become users?

And it's not just adults. Children are growing up with AI tutors. Apps that teach, entertain, correct, and soothe. They do it with infinite patience and without ever losing their temper. What will happen if they prefer to learn with an AI rather than with their teachers, or to be comforted by it rather than their parents? Will we be able to compete as humans with something that does everything "better"?

The Wall Street Journal, in its article "AI Makes Research Easy. That Might Be a Problem ," already warned of a worrying trend: AI is becoming so good at tasks like researching or writing academic papers that students may stop learning how to research on their own. In other words, the skill is lost before we even know we've lost it.

It's true that every technological advance has come with its share of alarm bells. Books, TV, and cell phones. And here we are. But this time there's a difference: AI doesn't just entertain or assist us. It also thinks for us. It decides for us. It even feels for us.

And if we don't learn to set limits, there will come a point where we won't even know what it means to think. Or decide. Or feel. Or be.

More ideas in the next Don't Read It.