THE fear I keep hearing about AI isn’t the one that makes headlines. It isn’t about robots taking jobs or machines making humans obsolete. It’s quieter than that. It’s the worry that dependency might make us forget how to think for ourselves.

Some doctors say even young adults may not be spared ‘brain atrophy’ so forgetting is normal. But what I’m increasingly witnessing isn’t the forgetfulness of age. It’s something more voluntary. A willingness to hand over the thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. I am on team AI. It’s no different to assistant tools like Cliff Notes in the late 1980s when we needed help understanding the AP literature heavyweights. You still had to read Joseph Conrad but Cliff Notes could help you understand him better. Now you could probably get AI to write like Joseph Conrad. We’re blaming AI for generating writing but not looking at the person making it do the generating. There’s always been, and will be, shortcuts to everything in life. Sometimes I think we are mad at the wrong thing.

But let’s be precise about who benefits from our dependency. Big Tech is already telling us how we should look — the same stick thin, filled lip, cat-eyed........

© Dawn