Thank you for this essay. I hate hearing other writers say they use AI just "to brainstorm." Then they start to use it to organize and to check and summarize their work. Then to draft passages on complex topics that they say they customize or personalize. It's a creep that undercuts our creativity and critical thinking. I use zero AI for writing or for other tasks, including making graphics (like a flyer for a birthday party). I loathe AI graphics. Andrea Bartz (an author and lead plaintiff in the authors' successful class action suit against Anthropic) is an excellent person to follow here on Substack for reasons and ways to resist AI; I recommend starting with her essay, "Why I'm against the use of generative AI altogether" https://andibartz.substack.com/p/why-im-against-the-use-of-generative .
"But then, as you begin to use it for more and more tasks, it replicates and grows roots in your brain"
This ^. I was a heavy user of it; again, it starts small, and then grows pretty fast. Before I knew it, I was using it for coaching what movies I watch, which books to read, and how my lifts were progressing. It was a trap, and quitting cold turkey for over a month now has made me feel more alive and thinking for myself again. Scary, IMO.
Excellent article. Literally all of it resonates. Ive been using AI for my work, because it feels efficient. But it also feels horrible. Because as you articulated so well, AI can’t make me feel the way I do when I write it myself and the words all line up and land in the right place. Ive been missing that sense of satisfaction. I know it’s time to stop using it, but the price - accepting that stuff will take longer - makes it quite hard. I even feel a bit trapped. Which as a previous commenter said, is pretty scary.
I appreciate this so much. I also know that some feel compelled to use AI because of the pressure they feel to create and to compete for business out there on the interweb, or the students who feel pressured for grades (and time), or those at work fo produce, produce, produce. So, what to do? And maybe as importantly, what to do if you’ve found yourself overusing AI. Can you come back from it like you would from down-time from physical work? Can you rebuild the brain and if so, how? Is it a matter of AI users just stopping using AI so much? Or is something more required? A sort of 12-step program or something else?
I'm so glad to see someone else writing about this (and sans AI). Great piece.
To truly understand something, you need to be able to explain it. And to explain it, you need to have assimilated extensive knowledge and the ability to synthesise it, to recognise where and how to build bridges over that dense knowledge so that they can be walked by the reader. Before AI, fluent writing signalled that someone had laboured for hours trying to collapse three-dimensional thought into a two-dimensional stream of words that could convey that understanding to another person. Good writing meant good thinking. (Or it used to.)
AI broke this. Fluency can now be manufactured, at scale and is no longer a measure of thought. A fluent piece of writing can still mean that many hours of thought went into it. It can also mean a one-line prompt did.
From the article, It is not whether to use AI, but whether the way it is being used is quietly eroding the human capabilities that organizations depend on.
The risk is most acute in domains where judgment, accountability, and critical thinking are not incidental but essential, such as in health care, law, education, and management consulting. Workers who routinely defer to AI without questioning it may find their capacity for independent reasoning gradually eroding through disuse. And unlike a drop in productivity, that erosion is invisible until the moment it matters most: the client meeting where there is no AI to consult, the diagnosis that requires judgment no algorithm can provide, the strategic decision that demands genuine human insight.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
I almost crossed a threshold recently with Chat GPT. I had an ultrarunning training question and asked it. Normally I would pay a lot of money to a Coach for that. I even told AI that I felt guilty about not hiring a Coach. Of course, it said I wasn't replacing a Coach but just supplementing her advice from the past. God help me, I don't ever want to have that "conversation" again!
Thank you for this essay. I hate hearing other writers say they use AI just "to brainstorm." Then they start to use it to organize and to check and summarize their work. Then to draft passages on complex topics that they say they customize or personalize. It's a creep that undercuts our creativity and critical thinking. I use zero AI for writing or for other tasks, including making graphics (like a flyer for a birthday party). I loathe AI graphics. Andrea Bartz (an author and lead plaintiff in the authors' successful class action suit against Anthropic) is an excellent person to follow here on Substack for reasons and ways to resist AI; I recommend starting with her essay, "Why I'm against the use of generative AI altogether" https://andibartz.substack.com/p/why-im-against-the-use-of-generative .
"But then, as you begin to use it for more and more tasks, it replicates and grows roots in your brain"
This ^. I was a heavy user of it; again, it starts small, and then grows pretty fast. Before I knew it, I was using it for coaching what movies I watch, which books to read, and how my lifts were progressing. It was a trap, and quitting cold turkey for over a month now has made me feel more alive and thinking for myself again. Scary, IMO.
Excellent article. Literally all of it resonates. Ive been using AI for my work, because it feels efficient. But it also feels horrible. Because as you articulated so well, AI can’t make me feel the way I do when I write it myself and the words all line up and land in the right place. Ive been missing that sense of satisfaction. I know it’s time to stop using it, but the price - accepting that stuff will take longer - makes it quite hard. I even feel a bit trapped. Which as a previous commenter said, is pretty scary.
I appreciate this so much. I also know that some feel compelled to use AI because of the pressure they feel to create and to compete for business out there on the interweb, or the students who feel pressured for grades (and time), or those at work fo produce, produce, produce. So, what to do? And maybe as importantly, what to do if you’ve found yourself overusing AI. Can you come back from it like you would from down-time from physical work? Can you rebuild the brain and if so, how? Is it a matter of AI users just stopping using AI so much? Or is something more required? A sort of 12-step program or something else?
“Writing well is a proxy for thinking well” —> yes!
Yes to any sort of creative work not being written-created by AI 💯.
I'm so glad to see someone else writing about this (and sans AI). Great piece.
To truly understand something, you need to be able to explain it. And to explain it, you need to have assimilated extensive knowledge and the ability to synthesise it, to recognise where and how to build bridges over that dense knowledge so that they can be walked by the reader. Before AI, fluent writing signalled that someone had laboured for hours trying to collapse three-dimensional thought into a two-dimensional stream of words that could convey that understanding to another person. Good writing meant good thinking. (Or it used to.)
AI broke this. Fluency can now be manufactured, at scale and is no longer a measure of thought. A fluent piece of writing can still mean that many hours of thought went into it. It can also mean a one-line prompt did.
(I wrote about this more here if curious: https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/ai-generated-content-mind-virus)
This article talks about another interesting aspect they have called cognitive surrender,
https://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/thought-leadership/wharton-at-work/2026/05/thinking-fast-slow-and-artificially/
From the article, It is not whether to use AI, but whether the way it is being used is quietly eroding the human capabilities that organizations depend on.
The risk is most acute in domains where judgment, accountability, and critical thinking are not incidental but essential, such as in health care, law, education, and management consulting. Workers who routinely defer to AI without questioning it may find their capacity for independent reasoning gradually eroding through disuse. And unlike a drop in productivity, that erosion is invisible until the moment it matters most: the client meeting where there is no AI to consult, the diagnosis that requires judgment no algorithm can provide, the strategic decision that demands genuine human insight.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
I almost crossed a threshold recently with Chat GPT. I had an ultrarunning training question and asked it. Normally I would pay a lot of money to a Coach for that. I even told AI that I felt guilty about not hiring a Coach. Of course, it said I wasn't replacing a Coach but just supplementing her advice from the past. God help me, I don't ever want to have that "conversation" again!
very well said.