When AI thinks for us

AI can help us think. It can give us ideas, explain something, find information, suggest an answer or help us make a decision.

As it becomes easier to ask AI what it thinks, we might begin to wonder what happens when we ask before we have thought for ourselves.

I’m curious about what happens when AI becomes so easy to turn to that we begin relying on it to do some of our thinking for us.

When the answer comes first

We can ask AI almost anything. Instead of sitting with a question, we can ask for an answer. Instead of working through an idea, we can ask for suggestions. Instead of deciding what we think, we can ask what it thinks.

There is nothing wrong with using AI this way.

Although sometimes the thinking that happens before we ask the question is part of what helps us understand what we actually think.

When we stop sitting with a question

Some questions need time. We might have an initial thought, change our mind, notice something we hadn't considered, or simply sit with uncertainty for a while. AI can make it tempting to move quickly past that process. The answer may arrive before we've had the chance to work out what our own answer might be.

When convenience becomes a habit

We already use technology to reduce the effort of everyday tasks. AI takes this further by allowing us to hand over parts of thinking, reasoning and decision-making.

Perhaps the question isn't whether we should use AI.

Perhaps it's whether we notice when we are using it to support our thinking and when we are allowing it to replace it.

Keeping our own thinking

There may be times when AI is exactly the help we need, and there may be times when we want to think something through ourselves first. We might form our own view before asking for another perspective. We might sit with a question for a while. We might make a decision and then use AI to challenge our thinking rather than make the decision for us.

Our attention can be drawn towards the quickest answer. Perhaps sometimes it is worth noticing that pull and giving ourselves the time to think.

I wonder what you might notice the ne