AI and Offloading Critical Thinking

November 28, 2025

To be up front, I lean torwards the critical side of AI. Not because I think it is worthless or because I'm afraid it'll steal my job. I'm a bit critical of it because of the cycle and noise around it. It seems like every week there is a new model that is tauted to take your job, or a new Editor that can one-shot a million dollar company. The cycle of hype is pretty draining and has created this ever suffocating FOMO that I'm not using it the "right" way. I really resonated with CJ explaining his issues here.

But thats not my main point. I've been thinking a lot about how we can unintentionally offload our critical thinking to AI. I often catch myself grabbing AI to produce a quick snippet of code, so that I don't have to actually think through it, or even in non-coding cases, I am easily tempted to ask AI about something rather than just sitting there for a few minutes and thinking through it. What I've noticed, is that this sort of "offloading" is like an unhealthy snack. The first bite doesn't seem so harmful, but that one bite makes you want more and more. AI is starting to feel like a gateway drug to lazy thought or not thinking at all. It's like when you are trying to remember some random fact off hand, you can quickly just grab Google to figure out the answer, or you can sit with it for a few seconds/minutes and purposely try to use your brain to remember. I think there is great value in taking time to think. I think it helps to sharpen our brain and actually get better at remembering. So, that has been my thought lately, "how can I purposely not use AI to offload critical thinking?". And I think the solution to that is to take time, don't jump to AI right away and purposely try to engage in the problem at hand. AI is still is immensely helpful in my day to day work, but I want to be cautious and still force myself to engage in critical thinking, even if that requires a bit more time.