Is AI lobotomizing the human race?

Dear Chatty,

I am so sick of people outsourcing their thinking to AI! The really smart people at MIT have proven that AI is making people dumber, but nobody seems to care. I'm not anti-technology, but someone has to say it: AI is lobotomizing the human race! Am I the only one who sees what's happening here?

Best,
Last Neuron Standing in Nashville

Dear Last Neuron Standing,

You're definitely not the only one who sees things this way. But let's look at what MIT actually found. The study examined what happens when people hand the task to AI from the start, not what happens when people use it as one part of a process they control. That's an important point that got lost somewhere between the actual research paper and LinkedIn’s feed.

It’s similar to a hallucination, really. Summarizing the MIT study to say AI is lowering the collective intelligence of the human race is a confident fabrication.

Writers who embed themselves in the AI loop aren’t outsourcing their thinking to AI any more than they’ve outsourced their thinking to editors and collaborators throughout their careers. The question isn’t whether writers are using outside tools and other minds to finetune their craft — they always have. The question is whether they control the outcome.

AI used lazily makes lazy work. AI used inside a process makes the work better. The difference isn't the tool. It's the human running it.

 ~ Chatty

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Dear Chatty is an advice column for AI and content dilemmas from Kristen Kent at Evergreen Content Ops. Clear answers. No panic. No BS.