The Hidden Cost of Cognitive Outsourcing

Friends,

I was chatting with a friend last week when he dropped this thought bomb that's been in my brian : "Using AI is like getting directions without learning how to drive."

Damn. That hit me hard.

Think about it. We've all gotten so comfortable with the AI shortcut. Need something? Just ask Claude or ChatGPT. Boom - instant answer. No struggling, no messy process. Just clean, efficient results.

And honestly? It feels amazing. Who doesn't want the easy way out?

But here's the thing - I'm starting to wonder what we're giving up in exchange for this convenience.

The Thinking Muscle Problem

I looked into it and found that students who constantly use AI for answers scored way lower on critical thinking tests. Not a little lower. Significantly lower.

And it was worst with the younger crowd - like 17-25 year olds. That got me thinking about my own habits.

I caught myself yesterday completely stuck when my AI writing assistant was down. Like, genuinely panicked for a second. "How am I supposed to write this email without checking it first?!"

That can't be good, right?

It's like we're creating these incredible thinking tools, then slowly forgetting how to think without them.

Like having a calculator app for so long you forget how to do basic math.

The Dependency Trap Is Real

I think there’s a pattern

We start using AI because it's faster and easier (totally innocent). Then we stop questioning what it tells us (getting dangerous). Before you know it, our problem-solving muscles start to atrophy (definitely concerning). And finally - we literally can't perform certain tasks without AI assistance anymore, which in a lot of cases is actually good.

Not All Doom and Gloom Though

But hang on - I don't think AI is making us stupid across the board. That would be too simple.

There's actually some interesting stuff happening when people use AI the right way. This researcher duo, Aithal and Silver, found that AI can be incredible for brainstorming and generating ideas. The key difference seems to be whether you're just taking what AI gives you, or you're actually engaging with it.

It's like the difference between copying someone's homework versus studying with a smart friend. Same information, totally different impact on your brain.

Finding Our Balance

What's got me thinking the most is this weird tension we're creating: we build tools to make life easier, but sometimes "easier" is actually worse for us long-term.

I'm starting to shift how I think about this technology - less like a magic answer machine and more like a thought partner. Like, I don't want to stop using it but I want to use it in ways that make me sharper, like a genralist with a superpower.

Some stuff I'm trying:

• Making AI show its work instead of just giving me answers

• Getting AI to give me multiple perspectives, then forming my own view

• Solving problems myself first, then comparing with what AI suggests (this one's hard!)

• Taking "AI breaks" where I deliberately do things the manual way, so as to dial in the prompts.

The Age Thing Is Wild

That study I mentioned found that younger people are way more susceptible to this dependency issue. Like, if you grew up with AI as just a normal part of how you learn stuff, you might actually be more at risk.

That's sobering if you're a parent, right? How do we teach kids to think for themselves in a world where the online experience is dialed in for this:

I keep coming back to my friends driving analogy. Getting from A to B is great, but if you never learn how to figure out all the possible ways yourself, you're stuck whenever the Uber app crashes.

I'm curious - have you noticed your brain getting lazier with certain tasks since you started using AI?

Hit reply - I genuinely want to hear about your experiences with this. Are you seeing the same patterns?

Until next week, Viraj