Is AI Making Us Stupid?

page IA

IA inside

*

In the summer of 2008, The Atlantic published "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", an article by Nicholas Carr, whose main argument was that the Internet may have had detrimental effects on cognition by diminishing our capacity for concentration and contemplation. His central thesis was that the Internet's design—with its hyperlinks, constant distractions, and shallow "scanning" of information—was eroding our capacity for deep reading and sustained focus. His fear was that by offloading memory and attention to the network, we were sacrificing our ability for reflection and creative thought.

Seventeen years later, can we say the same about AI? 

Yes, this argument applies with surprising force to modern AI:

• Diminished Critical Thinking: Just as the Internet was accused of making us "lazy readers," AI is accused of making us "lazy thinkers." Why spend time formulating an argument, structuring a paper, or even solving a complex problem when an AI can generate a plausible, pre-packaged answer in seconds? The fear is that we are outsourcing our critical reasoning, allowing a machine to bypass the very cognitive work that makes us smarter.
• Skill Erosion: Carr worried that a reliance on Google would diminish our memory and research skills. Today, the same concern exists for generative AI. If an AI can write code, translate, draft a report, or outline an essay, what happens to our fundamental skills in these areas? The argument is that over-reliance on AI could lead to a dependency where the user loses the ability to perform these tasks on their own.
• The Problem of the "Black Box": A key difference, but one that strengthens the parallel, is the "black box" issue. While the Internet provides a vast, disorganized library, an AI provides a single, confident answer without showing its work. This bypasses the act of verification and reasoning, encouraging a passive acceptance of information rather than active, critical engagement.

The most compelling counter-argument to the "AI is making us stupid" thesis could be that it fundamentally miscategorizes the technology. Unlike the Internet, which primarily serves as a vast, passive library for information consumption, modern AI is an engine for creation and synthesis. Its primary function isn't just to present data, but to manipulate, structure, and generate new content from that data.

This distinction reframes the debate entirely. Proponents of AI don't see it as a force that diminishes our intelligence; rather, they view it as an intelligence amplifier. The core argument is that AI acts as a "co-pilot," taking over the tedious, routine, or data-intensive aspects of a task—the "mechanical effort"—and thereby freeing up our cognitive resources for higher-level, more creative, and more critical pursuits.

The arguments about AI's impact on our minds are not new. They are a modern echo of a recurring anxiety that has accompanied every major technological revolution. We have a deep-seated fear that a new technology will fundamentally alter, and almost always for the worse, our most cherished cognitive abilities. 

In Phaedrus, Plato, through the voice of Socrates, famously argued that writing was a dangerous technology. He worried that it would erode our memory, making people dependent on external symbols and "destroying their minds" by giving them the appearance of knowledge without genuine understanding. 

Centuries later, the printing press was met with similar suspicion. Critics feared that it would lead to a flood of misinformation, cheapen knowledge, and make people passive consumers of text rather than active participants in intellectual discourse.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, television and the Internet were similarly accused of turning us into passive, distracted, and superficial thinkers, eroding our capacity for deep reading and sustained concentration—the very argument Nicholas Carr made. 

Is this fear about AI justified? Or is AI simply the latest tool that will force us to adapt and evolve? The answer may lie not in the technology itself, but in how we choose to use it. Just as the printing press led to both propaganda and the Renaissance, and the Internet to both misinformation and unprecedented access to knowledge, the ultimate impact of AI will depend on whether we use it to outsource our minds or to empower them.

In the end, the question is not whether AI will make us stupid, but whether we will allow ourselves to become passive in its presence. History shows that every new technology—from writing, to the press, to the Internet—has provoked the same concerns: that it would erode our deepest cognitive faculties. And in every case, those fears were both right and wrong: right in that each tool reshaped how we think, wrong in assuming that such reshaping must mean decline. 

AI will be no different. If we approach it as a substitute for thought, it risks flattening our intellectual capacities into passive consumption. But if we treat it as an extension of thought, a co-creative instrument that demands our judgment and discernment, it has the potential to amplify rather than diminish us. The real danger, then, is not that AI will make us stupid—but that in surrendering the final act of critical reflection to the machine, we will make ourselves so.