Why AI is making us lose our minds (and not in the way you’d think)

The world loves AI. Nearly 1 billion people are using OpenAI products — and it happened in just two years. It’s the Silicon Valley playbook: Make it great, make it cheap, get us addicted, then figure out how to make billions.

We love AI because it offers cognitive shortcuts at a whole new scale. But… this won’t end well for most of us. We’ll let AI take over a few tasks, and soon find it’s doing all of them. We’ll lose our minds, our jobs and our opportunities.

But it doesn’t have to happen this way. Here’s how to see the path ahead — and take a different one.

The beginning of the end

In March 2023, I used ChatGPT for the first time. Now I use ChatGPT or Claude every day. AI has made my brainwork faster and more productive. But I am also getting cognitively lazy.

I used to have to check AI’s drafts thoroughly. But now, it gives me a good first draft 90% of the time, and I’m losing the motivation to check its work.

A year ago, I thought the workforce would divide into “those who don’t use AI” and “those who do.” Now I see that’s wrong. In five years, everyone will use AI. The real divide will be between those who manage their AIs — and those who outsource their thinking to it.

How outsourcing degrades our thinking

Humans have always offloaded cognitive work. Before books, bards memorized Homer’s entire Iliad. Now technology is an extension of our brains, enabling us to offload math, navigation and note-taking.AI is different. It can handle almost any cognitive task, and it feels productive. So AI outsourcing begins innocently. You ask AI to draft an email. It does it well and saves you 10 minutes. Next, you ask it to outline a presentation. It nails it.

You start using it for more complex tasks, like setting strategy. You start depending on AI to do the work, and slowly, your skills atrophy. 

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon released a paper showing gen AI can reduce our critical thinking ability. When knowledge workers are confident in AI’s output, they’re less likely to use their own brains.

People who trust AI (like me) rely on themselves to be its fact-checker. But there are two problems with that: 1) We overestimate our ability to identify AI’s mistakes, and 2) The temptation to skip fact-checking gets stronger. 

AI drivers vs. passengers

In the next 10 years, the knowledge workforce will divide into two groups: AI drivers and AI passengers.

AI passengers will happily delegate their cognitive work to AI. They’ll paste a prompt into ChatGPT, copy the result, and submit it as their own.

Short term, they will be rewarded for doing faster work. But as AI operates with less human oversight, passengers will be judged as surplus for adding nothing to AI’s output. 

AI drivers will insist on directing AI. They’ll use AI as a first draft and rigorously check its work. And they’ll turn it off sometimes and make time to think.

Long term, the economic divide between these groups will widen dramatically. AI drivers will claim a disproportionate share of wealth, while passengers become replaceable.

How to be an AI driver

Make yourself AI’s boss in these ways: 

Start with what you know. Use AI in areas where you have pre-existing expertise; be critical of its output.

Have a conversation instead of asking for the answer. Don’t ask AI, “What should we do with our marketing budget?” Give AI constraints, inputs, options and debate with it.

Be hyper-vigilant. Be an active participant. Don’t assume the output is good enough. Challenge yourself to ask, “Is this a good recommendation?”

Practice active skepticism. Constantly probe AI with your point of view. “Isn’t that downplaying the risk of this venture?”

Resist outsourcing every first draft. The blank page is scary, but it’s crucial for activating your brain.

Make the final call, and own it. AI should assist with every medium-to-high stakes decision you make, but it doesn’t make the final call. Own your decisions as a human.

Your mind is a terrible thing to waste

With AI you now have a thought partner who’s available 24/7 and has “expertise” on any topic. 

But you’re also at a crossroads. You’re going to see many colleagues opt out of “active thinking” and outsource their decision-making to AI. Many won’t even realize their cognitive skills have atrophied until it happens. And by then, it’ll be hard to go back.

Don’t be this person. Use AI to challenge and strengthen your thinking, not replace it. 

The question isn’t, “Will you use AI?” The question is, “What kind of AI user do you want to be: driver or passenger?”

Greg Shove is the CEO of Section.