I recently spoke to a group of university educators worried about students constantly using AI in their educational activities. They feared that students—a future generation of industry workers—will become overly dependent on AI. The main question was: Should we try to intervene? (See Owoc et al., 2019 for a discussion.)

While the question is complex, I will suggest one way to look at it, which I hope reflects a more balanced view on the implications of our everyday AI usage. The idea consists of viewing AI in the same way we view any technology that appeared in the past and made a “Kuhnian” (Kuhn, 1997) revolution in how we live and think.

Consider the printing press: critics feared it would overwhelm society with unfiltered ideas and undermine scholarly authority. Radio faced backlash for distracting families and spreading sensationalism. Television has long been blamed for eroding attention spans and critical thinking (perhaps for good reasons). Finally, and most importantly, the internet and smartphones—perhaps the last big tech revolution before LLMs—provoked debates over information overload and social media harm (Carr, 2020).

My point is, it is not the type of technology that makes your mind sharper or duller—it is about the way you engage with it. Take the internet: in developed countries, everyone has access to it. It is hard even to imagine the amount of useful information the internet contains. Some argue that this equal accessibility of the internet should also result in equal opportunities for learning (Haq et al., 2023, p.........

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