AI and the “regressive progression” of human thinking
How working faster makes us dumber — Cognitive death by a thousand cuts — The sacrifice of meaning on the altar of technological progress
AI poses a real threat to our ability to think.
Delegating mental tasks to AI is becoming the norm. Students write their essays with GPT. Consultants rely on AI to create their slides. Employees constantly seek to minimize mental effort by outsourcing it to AI.
AI is mostly praised for its ability to increase productivity. It can "think" as well as — if not better than — we can, and faster. Many people think that if they’re not using AI, they’ll fall behind their competition. And from a productivity standpoint, this is true.
After all, people who use AI intelligently can produce ten times the work output in half the time compared to “old school” workers. I’m the first to praise the spectacular productivity leaps that can be achieved with the smart use of AI.
I’m using it strategically in my own business, and I do think it’d be a tactical mistake not to use it in certain parts of the value creation process.
But this productivity gain comes at the cost of a diminished capacity for thought. It’s the first time in human history that man has found a tool that can think in his place.
The creative impulse that once generated ideas, the discernment that organized those ideas by relevance, and the verbal intelligence that found the right words to express them — all of that is no longer necessary to produce intellectual work of any kind.
Now, lines of code replace these functions and, in many cases, produce a result superior to what human thought would have achieved. And just like a muscle that atrophies when not used, our capacity for reflection decreases as our reliance on AI increases.
In the long term, this observation is rather worrying. I’ll confess, even when I use AI for just a few days on a project (delegating parts of the intellectual production), I can already feel that my thinking abilities aren’t as sharp as usual, like a sword rusting over time when it’s left in the dust of the basement.
Studies from Stanford and the Oxford Internet Institute have already documented early signs of cognitive offloading and reduced critical thinking in frequent AI users. Preliminary EEG-based research also shows lower neural engagement during AI‑assisted writing sessions.
Generations that are the most at risk of cognitive decline are those who are still in the early stages of their cognitive development (anyone from toddlers to high-school students) and who’ve discovered the Prometheus fire of AI before fully developing their thinking abilities.
We’re already seeing these younger generations becoming less intellectually astute (wanted to say dumber but not looking for an army of vegan gen-Z haters) and mentally lazier. I can hardly imagine the long-term impact…
GPT and other LLM models have only existed in the mainstream sphere for two or three years, and the negative effects on humanity’s capacity for thought are already clearly noticeable.
In ten, fifteen, or twenty years, as AI continues to improve, it’s not unreasonable to imagine a world where the majority of people no longer think at all. AI does it for them.
This prospect is frightening, because it suggests a regression rather than a progression. A regressive progression: a technological progression that leads to cognitive regression.
The double “regressive progression” that's already underway
We can anticipate a two-fold regression:
First, a regression in our capacity to think, because if AI can "think" for us, there’s no longer a need to think for ourselves. And when we don’t train our thinking, we lose the ability to do it. Nature discards functions that go unused. Limbs that are useless get eliminated by evolution. Cognitive functions that are left unused regress.
Second, a regression in our intellectual courage, which could be defined as our capacity to exert cognitive effort to produce ideas. This intellectual courage is essential to lead projects that require creative labor and mental gymnastics — like writing a book, crafting an important email, or composing a thoughtful message to defuse tension in a relationship.
If AI can replace our thinking (or at least most of it), it renders our intellectual courage obsolete. It turns it into a decorative relic. And with the disappearance of that courage comes intellectual laziness.
In other words, to put it simply: delegating our thinking to AI will very likely make people less intelligent and more lazy.
It’s a deep, long-term trend that will likely unfold over several decades, unless a collective awareness emerges about the destructive impact of AI on our thinking abilities.
Personally, I don’t believe such awareness will occur, because the vast majority of people simply want to exert as little effort as possible. The human mind is biologically programmed to seek the path of least mental resistance.
Anything that makes life easier is accepted and welcomed with open arms. Just look at the global success of ChatGPT, Grammarly correcting our sentences, Google Maps telling us where to go, YouTube feeding us what to watch.
My prediction, then, is rather pessimistic: Most people are becoming less intelligent and more lazy.
Existential thrill is found in the act of creation. AI bypasses that, destroying the juice of meaning
But there’s another consequence, more subtle, more profound: the loss of meaning.
The act of thinking provides intellectual pleasure and creates meaning. We feel good when we create something beautiful and relevant. We feel far less fulfilled when that thing — no matter how brilliant it may be — was created from A to Z by AI. The feeling of accomplishment simply isn’t the same.
Humans need to create in order to find meaning. We all know the proverb: It’s the journey that counts, not the destination. What brings us pleasure, what gives us a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, is the act of thinking — the process of shaping ideas in our minds, then laying them out on paper (or keyboard) with clarity and elegance.
AI allows us to bypass this creative process and jump directly to the destination (the output). We can give it a few initial directions, take the first steps, but once the AI is well-prompted, the path unfolds without us. The inner journey that used to lead to the final result is now replaced and outsourced to a computational force.
In such cases, there is no internal mental path anymore. We know where we start. We more or less know where we want to end up. We press a button, and in a second, we’re there.
It’s like wanting to climb Mount Everest but ending up being dropped at the summit by helicopter, without any effort. The result, without the journey. The victory, without the ordeal.
But without struggle, does glory taste the same?
It seems that humans have an inner radar that detects what they truly deserve — a mechanism that grants them the right to enjoy victory according to the degree of their investment.
A man who celebrates a victory he hasn’t earned knows he doesn’t deserve it. And so, the joy of victory is offset by the guilt of having cheated.
It’s the same pattern that plays out when we depend on AI for our entire creative process. We might be pleased with the result. We might even say, “Damn, that GPT-written financial report sounds amazing!”. But the pride isn’t really there.
That pride can only be felt when the mental journey has been made. When the act of creation has been accomplished through the power of the brain coupled with the sincerity of the heart.
The loss of meaning, and the rise of nihilism caused by replacing human thought with AI, are existential risks far graver than the risks of laziness or stupidity that we’re already seeing on a large scale.
We can imagine living in a world where people are lazier and less intelligent. But a world where people no longer find meaning in life?
That’s something else entirely.