Are We Losing the Thread? The Silent Dependency on Artificial Intelligence.

There's something telling about the moment you open an AI app to ask it what you should have for dinner tonight. Not because it's wrong to ask for ideas, but because of what it says about how we've started to relate to our own capacity to decide.

Artificial intelligence has reached nearly every corner of daily life. We use it to write emails, plan trips, look for work, study, and even to process emotions. Extraordinary tools, without question. But convenience has a price we rarely discuss openly: the slow abandonment of our own judgment.

"When we stop making mistakes, we also stop learning. AI doesn't make the errors that help us grow."

The Muscle We Stop Using

Memory, deep reasoning, tolerance for uncertainty — these are skills that are maintained through use. When we systematically delegate those tasks to an external system, the cognitive muscle doesn't disappear all at once, but it does weaken. Researchers already have a name for this phenomenon: cognitive offloading, the tendency to externalize thinking onto devices and systems.

This isn't about rejecting technology. The problem arises when delegation becomes automatic, unreflective. When the first reaction to any doubt isn't to think, but to ask the machine.

What AI Cannot Give You

An AI can generate flawless text, but it cannot give you the pride of having written something yourself. It can offer you options for a difficult decision, but it cannot bear the weight of having made it. It can simulate empathy, but it cannot truly accompany you.

There are dimensions of human experience that only make sense when we are the ones living them: the mistake, the doubt, the clumsy but genuine process of figuring something out on our own.

• 56% of adults in the U.S. already use generative AI at work. Source: Fullview, 2025
• 76% of people under 30 use AI tools on a regular basis. Source: YouGov / Brookings, 2025
• 25% of adults trust AI to provide accurate information. Source: Fullview, 2025

Using AI Without Letting It Use Us

The key lies not in rejection, but in awareness. Using AI as an amplifier of your own thinking, not as a substitute for it. Asking yourself the question before delegating: Could I try this on my own first? Not always. But far more often than we tend to think.

Artificial intelligence will be as empowering or as limiting as the use we choose to make of it. And that decision, at least for now, remains entirely ours.