At a time when sending an email, writing a report or even writing to a friend can be resolved with a simple command written by a chatbot, more and more people trust artificial intelligence tools to automate everyday life.
What previously required a few minutes of reflection, is now resolved in seconds with written, structured and ready proposals to send. But what seemed like a simple time savings begins to have a cost that does not notice on the screen, but how your mind works.
When we are facing the computer and we need to answer a message, articulate a complex idea or structure a request with the right tone, without thinking too much, we leave it in the hands of Chatgpt or similar tools, such as Gemini or even Copilot.
In principle, it seems practical, but If it happened to you that then it is hard for you to find the words for yourself, let me tell you that you are not the only one who has experienced it. More and more people warn of a consequence that, the more you let it think about you, you think you.
Automatize thought has become a double edge weapon
The generative apps not only suggest phrases, but also correct, predict, restructure, as well as propose arguments, summaries, even writing approaches. It is an effective, but also comfortable tool, so much, that eliminates friction that normally implies thinking.
And it is precisely at this point where the problems begin. The mental effort you previously activated to choose words, organize ideas or review what you said, completely disappearsand not because you can’t do it, but because you stop doing it.
This phenomenon is known as cognitive discharge, which This is the human tendency to rely on external tools to release mental effort. It is not new – it has happened with the GPS or the calculators – but now the process advances, and that has deeper consequences of what it seems.
Several studies have already begun to document the effect and a clear example are Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon’s research, which showed that those who systematically trust AI tend to lose ease in critical thinking.
In the short term, it may seem imperceptible, but long, it translates into less precision when expressing yourself, less confidence when building an argument and progressive loss of active vocabulary.
In fact, journalist Sam Schechner, in the middle The Wall Street Journalhe lived in his own flesh. He claims that he started using chatgpt to write emails in French – he lives in Paris – and in a short time he also used it to send messages to friends.
What seemed like a productivity trick became a problem, since it cost him more to write on his own. «Artificial intelligence was devouring my brain»wrote. And he did not say it as a metaphor, but he realized that his skills to communicate in French, developed for years, were being lost by not practicing it.
AI is useful, but is not exempt from consequences
Deleging is not bad in itself, the worrying thing is when you stop being able to do what you did before, and that does not depend only on technology, but on how you use it. Neuroscience research themselves warn that the brain is an organ that optimizes resources: what you do not train, you forget it.
So it is not lazy, it is adaptation, this means that if you let others – in this case, the AI - speak, write or reason for you, your mind assumes that it no longer needs to do it, which is very dangerous.
AI can be excellent to translate, correct errors or help you better structure your ideasbut You cannot replace you in the essential, which is to think clearlybuild your own point of view and express it with your words, since in the end you lose part of your intellectual capacity.
A good way to protect your thought is to use chatgpt or gemini as a tool, not as a substitute. You can let a scheme suggest, but write the text, in the same way you can check a fact, but not ask you to draw conclusions.
And if you are going to write something important, ask yourself before starting: can I do it without help? Only then will you keep the mental muscle that makes you think, learn and grow. Delegate the mechanical is fine, but the mental, not so muchbecause if AI facilitates life, it can also impoverish it if you don’t put limits.
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Tags: Artificial intelligence