Hi reader, Suraj here —
Note: This was originally written as a part of an assignment, so please don’t mind the slightly longer paragraphs than usual. This is something I have been thinking about a lot, so I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy!
Have you read about evolution? Chances are that you did, and you have a good understanding of how it works. You know that over a span of time, over generations, species keep only the things they need and use. The things that are not used, on the other hand, are left behind. Just think about our appendix or wisdom teeth—remnants of what we once needed. This time, it seems like our critical thinking is one of the things our species will leave behind.
I noticed it first during my freshman year. Sitting in the back of a crowded lecture hall, I watched as a professor posed a challenging question about cognitive biases. The silence that followed wasn’t one of deep thought—it was the quiet tapping of fingers on screens as 16 students simultaneously asked AI for the answer. I felt a chill run through me. Was I witnessing evolution in real-time?
The advancement in technology has made our lives very convenient. Almost any information we need or might ever need is at the tip of our fingers now. With one key press, with one click of a button, we can access anything from the vast reservoir of knowledge human experience and curiosity has accumulated. Need to find some facts? You can Google it. Need to get somewhere? You have multiple navigation apps. Need to read something? Your phone can read it to you. Need to write a paper or complete an assignment? AI has got you covered. I see it in lecture halls—students typing questions into their phones rather than raising their hands.
Last week, I caught myself doing the same thing. Faced with a complex Psychology question, my hand twitched toward my phone before I’d given my mind even thirty seconds to wrestle with it. The realization hit me with a wave of shame that burned my chest. When had I stopped trusting my own ability to think?
But where are we going with that power? I think we have begun to live fast, almost hastily. Accessing ideas, finding solutions has become so easy with the internet and AI that we are slowly losing our ability to struggle through problems. Our body only keeps what it needs, and what it needs are the things it regularly employs. It is possible that critical thinking, our ability to connect abstract ideas, and being creative may not be the “needed” things anymore. If that is true, perhaps we are going to leave them behind.
Skill and knowledge acquisition—learning—is supposed to be hard. It is when it is hard that we actually grow; that is when our neurons build and strengthen connections in our mind. But if we don’t have to do it, why would our body even keep it?
I remember the headache I would get working through complex mathematics problems late into the night during high school. The satisfaction when the solution finally emerged from what seemed like chaos was incomparable—a deep, warm glow of accomplishment that AI-generated answers never provide. That feeling has become increasingly rare in my life, and I miss it with a hollowness that sometimes keeps me awake at night.
I have been pondering this question for a while now. At times, I feel defeated by the ability of an AI model. No matter how excellent a piece I create, an AI model could always find faults and make it better. It can always write better essays than I ever could. But if I were to so fully rely on a model, what about my humanity?
Humanity! That is it. That is the one thing an AI model can never have. I have to understand and accept that the mistakes that I make make what I produce original. The experiences, the pain, the flaws in a piece are what make it valuable, they are what make what I create authentic. The way my handwriting slants when I’m excited, the metaphors I choose based on my childhood memories—these cannot be replicated.
When I write about the ocean, I’m drawing on the salty taste of tears after learning of the loss of a loved one by the beach. When I describe anxiety, I feel again the flutter in my chest before delivering my first public speech in front of the entire school. These embodied experiences live in me, and me alone.
Yes, they are a collection of my own data set of experiences and life learnings, which is similar to how AI models are trained, but what an AI model will not be trained on is me. Humans are very complex beings. Sometimes their behavior is predictable, but every being is unique, every lived life is unique, and every experience is unique. Perhaps that is what makes me “me.”
I suppose it is time to go back in time a little. Maybe it is time to take long walks in nature, without music. Perhaps it is time to write with a pen and paper, without digital technology. I’ve been trying this recently—brainstorming ideas in just a notebook. The scratch of a pen on paper feels foreign at first, almost uncomfortable. But after some 20 minutes, I find my thoughts flowing in ways they hadn’t in years, meandering and connecting in patterns that surprise me. Whenever I do this, my hand cramps, but my mind feels alive.
Perhaps it is time to accept my flaws and work on improving them through rigor, through struggle, through hard work. Perhaps it is time for me to not trade my long-term cognitive ability and critical thinking for short-term convenience. Perhaps it is time for me to think again before searching for something or sending something to an AI model.
Perhaps it is time for me to live slow, not fast. To feel the full weight of my humanity—brilliant and flawed, efficient and meandering, logical and emotional—all the contradictions that make us irreplaceably human in an increasingly automated world. The future may belong to those who can work with AI, but the soul of that future will belong to those who remember how to think without it.
I hope this gave you something interesting to think about.
I’ll see you next week.
Warmly,
Suraj
