Listen to the audio version of this post here.
Is AI Making us Stupid?
You’re probably getting a lot of emails these days written by Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT.
The chatbots are always inviting us to make them our own, give them a name, and use them for business correspondence, among many other things.
Hell, LinkedIn even offers to write my posts for me once it sees that I’ve started to share my thoughts with my social media connections. Thanks anyway …
Maybe I’m a bit of a stickler?
When I get an email from you, I like to know it’s really from you. Written from the heart, so to speak. Reflective of your actual experience, opinions, and feelings. And I choose to share the same with you.
Okay, I admit I’ve dabbled with doing it the AI way.
I asked ChatGPT for some topics I might write about, and it offered a decent list of subjects related to business communication. It has enough information about me to know the sorts of content I might share with you.
It also has a handle on how I write. Because it has “read” my book, and if there’s anything people tell me about Show Up and Shine, it’s that when they read it, they could hear my voice in their ears—it sounds just like me.
I even had the chatbot sketch out one missive. It wasn’t bad. But somehow it felt like cheating. Or maybe a better way to think of it is that it was just checking a box. Newsletter written for this week? Check.
It just seems better to write it myself, don’t you think?
Some of the emails I send you have a particularly personal feel to them. They’re letting you in on a real experience I’ve had or my genuine feelings about something that happened in my life or in the news.
Other newsletters and blog posts are tied to learning something about speaking, networking, or maybe writing. The idea is to offer you useful information, the way I might in a workshop or a breakout session at a conference.
Here’s what I’ve discovered about you.
You’re likely to read all of them. But you’re much more likely to respond to the ones that feel like a personal letter rather than a teaching topic.
Just based on that, my guess is that my own genuine writing hits you differently than something an AI app might crank out. And that the same would be true for what you write, whether it’s a newsletter, an internal report, or an email to an associate or customer.
Turns out there’s another angle to all this. Writing our own content is not only better for our readers.
Writing our own content is also more valuable to us as writers.
Using artificial intelligence tools to churn out your writing diminishes your thinking ability. Really.
You might remember Cal Newport’s Deep Work. A decade ago, the computer science professor wrote that we were losing critical thinking skills by relying on quick and easy email and instant messaging.
Newport wanted us to dedicate long stretches of time to uninterrupted thinking. He told us to treat cognitive activity like a skill that we can improve with practice.
Since then, Newport says our thinking deficit has only gotten worse.
He wrote in The New York Times that now it’s not just a question of putting aside time for deep work. He says we’re “rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all.”
Here’s what the research shows.
Attention spans are much shorter than they were twenty years ago.
The percentage of adults who struggle with basic reading and math is dramatically higher in the last decade.
Ditto for the share of 18-year-olds who say they have trouble thinking and concentrating.
Just having our smartphones in the room with us reduces our ability to concentrate.
And a new study uncovered “significant negative correlation between frequent A.I. tool usage and critical thinking abilities.”
So what do we do now?
Cal Newport says it’s time for “a full revolution in defense of thinking.” Something like the focus we put now on physical well-being.
Many of us have cut back on junk food, started eating more vegetables, and incorporated more exercise in our daily routines. Why? We saw what a diet of Ding Dongs and Fritos did to our bodies, never mind the sedentary lives so many of us lead.
And we took action.
We ought to treat thinking in the same way. Newport recommends reading—books, not phone screens—as exercise for the brain. Consider pages-per-day the way you think about getting in your steps.
Set aside time with your phone in a different room to do some intentional thinking about a professional or personal challenge.
And pick up a pen or put those fingers on a keyboard.
“Your writing should be your own,” Newport says. “The strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout by an athlete; it’s not an annoyance to be eliminated but a key element of your craft.
You might start by writing a comment below. What’s your plan to counteract the drag those chatbots create on our critical thinking abilities?
I own and publish a bi-monthly Free Community Newsprint publication. I won’t use Ai although it’s on my iPhone without my permission. I wrote many articles and did experience some writers cramp, but I will continue to exercise my brain like I have for more than 20 years.
Thank you.
Sounds like your brain’s in good shape, Donna! The older I get, the more aware I am of the need to keep our brains active. I do crossword puzzles and a bunch of the NYT app games–I LOVE Spelling Bee! Newport’s convinced me to do more reading. (I read a lot of news, but not many books.) And like you, I’m going to stick with doing my own writing.
Great question! And worth asking by all of us. Thank you!
I’m not “all-in” on AI, but I do find it useful in learning Yiddish and brushing up on my Spanish. And while Claude does make mistakes regularly, especially with Yiddish, it knows more than I at this point.
As a writer, I’m VERY wary of AI. To me, it is the antithesis of WHY I pursue “an adventure in language” (to paraphrase William Stafford). It’s worrisome on so many levels.
Your language-learning seems like a great way to use artificial intelligence, Fred. I’m kind of surprised that Claude goofs with Yiddish–I would have expected it to have any language down pat.
I like that phrase “an adventure in language.” When I think of writing as an adventure rather than a chore, doing it myself only makes sense.
Thank you for writing about this, Catherine. AI has been rolled out way too fast without oversight, and it’s being used for things it shouldn’t be, like writing.
I recently had to get Windows 11, which has some AI incorporated in it. Word includes an app called Copilot that wants to do all my writing for me. I have repeatedly followed instructions to get it out of my computer, but it comes right back. The “corrections” suggested to me now are 90% wrong!
Scrolling on Facebook has shortened my attention span.
I read recently that there are college freshmen who have never read a book! How do you even get into college without having read even one book?
And my blood boils at the news that students have AI write their themes and essays.
Let’s get together and destroy human brains, why don’t we?
PS – The uncertainty in the economy caused by DT’s tariffs and war has caused our business to suffer. If you know of anyone who needs handman work (only the wealthy are doing remodeling), I’d appreciate it if you’d mention Ray. Thanks.
Your story about the “corrections ” Copilot offers is fascinating, Diane. Seems that sometimes the bots aren’t as smart as we are.
And I thought the remodeling business was still booming with people staying in their homes rather than selling and house-hunting. Thanks for the glimpse at what’s really going on.
I agree with this feature wholeheartedly. I even called it “cheating” early on as those in my profession were using it to craft descriptions of their property listings (an item I have struggled with for 30 years in the business.) I actually did try to use it on one of my listings last year and it wasn’t awful but I definitely had to extensively edit the ChatGpt product to give it more of my voice. I am not on board with so many who caution that AI will be taking over all of our jobs because people are still necessary for relationship building and maintaining. People are necessary for giving AI a personal, human voice. People are also necessary for 1-800 help lines when the bots only give you limited categories for help. I could go on and on but I will end here. Thank you for your perspective on this and numerous other current issues.
You’re not alone in resisting, Debbie. I have heard, though, that over time AI will make real estate agents unnecessary. I hope that’s wrong, and not only for your sake. As I think about a move myself, I’d certainly rather make it with help from a human!
BRAVO ‼️
You are always so on target with your messages.
Thank you
Thank YOU, Jack! I love that we’re still connected.
Here’s the thing — Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) are here to stay. At least for the next few years they should be viewed as tools. Ask yourself how can this tool help me. Those who can master the use of the tool will survive and excel now. They will produce more and in many cases with better results than alone.
I knew a U of C professor who was very proud of the fact that he never used a search engine. He refused to use a computer but did use an old 1970s era stand alone word processor. He was proud of the fact that he found out where the old card catalog was stashed in the basement of the library. This was viewed as quaint but in fact he was holding himself back to new possibilities and missing out on updates such as new books not represented in the old card catalog or access to papers and interactions he might have enjoyed on the Internet.
I agree we need to consciously exercise our minds but studies have shown that the best mind exercises involve learning new things not simply leaning on the familiar.
Let’s not worry so much about the negative aspects of change, let’s look at how we might embrace the change and use it to expand our way of doing things. You don’t have to use AI to write for you but you can ask for a second opinion on certain word usage or use it to verify that what you think you know is indeed accurate, if you are insecure about a phrase.
Since I work alone I use Copilot much like a coworker. I might be having trouble coming up with a title for a podcast, so I’ll ask Copilot to read what I have written and give me some ideas. In addition I can ask for the suggestions to be SEO friendly, which it can do probably better than me, having access to more information about what words people search. More often than not I use the suggestions as a prompt creating some variations of my own based on the ideas presented. If I ask Copilot to research a topic I ask for the citations so that I can verify important results.
Using the tool responsibly (and teaching students this) is the trick. If you pay attention you can pretty easily spot poorly generated, often inaccurate AI slop. This is particularly true in video, but that is a topic for another post.
Ranting against the horseless carriage did no good. The same is true with AI. Learn to make it work for you and worry less about those who are simply looking for a short cut — time will work out the bugs.
[This is 100% human written including my em dashes.]
Oh, I didn’t mean to be ranting against the horseless carriage, Reno. You’re right when you say that does no good. I have a ChatGPT account and I do use it. (Although I’m about to switch to Anthropic, but that’s another story.)
I just like the idea of writing that comes from the heart–the human heart. And I think there’s a reason the phrase “AI slop” has become part of the lexicon.
I’m with you on em dashes, my friend. I’ve always used them liberally as a way to indicate the pause you’d hear if you were listening to me. It pains me that they’ve become so identified with writing by an LLM.
Catherine, reading your blog post was so timely. I read an article in today’s Chicago Tribune where there’s now a movement among some schools to limit technology because of its adverse effects. I’ve been substitute teaching in three schools as I strive to get a full-time position, and I see both the positive and negative effects of technology. Students can now research anything they need to by typing a few keys on a tablet or Chromebook keyboard.
But what they’ve lost is the joy (seriously!) of researching many resources to write a paper, complete a project, and research a topic. Many times, they write a single prompt in their favorite AI, and AI will spit out a project or paper. The quality of the paper or project is dependent on the quality of the prompt, and some students have become very good at writing prompts that will produce a well-constructed (not thought-out) paper or project.
It’s like going to the back of the book to get the answer without trying or learning anything. We have a generation of students who haven’t learned research or discernment skills, and that will hurt them. Granted, I’ve been using AI to write cover letters because it saves a lot of time, but I proofread every one to see that it’s speaking the truth and speaking with my voice with the words I would use.
I can guarantee you that this wasn’t written using AI. =)
Good to know you didn’t AI me, Chuck!
You raise a good point about what students (and the rest of us too) are missing when we default to AI. And another good point about the prompts–writing those is a real art, isn’t it?
I hope those cover letters really are speaking with your voice. Because I like your voice!