3 Ways To Use AI So It Won't Dumb You Down At School Or Work

Forbes

3 hours ago

We've all heard about smart tech. What about using tech wisely?
For years I worked as a college essay coach.
I helped students create narratives to accompany their applications. In all that time what surprised me most was a universal discomfort with writing. Not only did my students struggle to construct powerful narratives, but many also had difficulty simply generating ideas.
It's therefore no surprise so many college students now turn to AI to complete their work. In August 2024, CampusTechnology.Com found that nearly 90% now use it to complete academic assignments. 'And they are using it regularly: Twenty-four percent reported using AI daily; 54% daily or weekly; and 54% on at least a weekly basis.'
Though many higher education institutions officially condemn AI as a form of cheating, many professors are also apparently using AI as a helpful resource, for everything from creating syllabi to addressing students on why they received a particular grade.
In May, The New York Times reported the story of Ella Stapleton, a college senior irked by what appears to be an academic double standard. 'Ms. Stapleton filed a formal complaint with Northeastern's business school, citing the undisclosed use of A.I. as well as other issues she had with his teaching style, and requested reimbursement of tuition for that class. As a quarter of the total bill for the semester, that would be more than $8,000.'
The Hidden Costs to Letting AI Do Your Thinking
'Necessity is the mother of invention' is a famous saying describing the natural tendency to fashion solutions to life's challenges. Ever since we crawled out of caves toward the bright lights of civilization, humankind has sought tools to lighten our mental and physical loads. The wheel is the most obvious example of devising an implement to assist with transportation difficulties. More recently, teleconferencing applications like Zoom and Microsoft Teams enabled remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of us would agree these two innovations produced a net positive effect, resulting in a progressively better society. Can we say the same about students and professors turning to AI for help with critical thinking?
Not according to a revealing new study from MIT's Media Lab. The researchers engaged 54 subjects ranging in age from 18-54 to write SAT essays using ChatGPT, Google Search, and just their own faculties. As Time reports: '…ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and 'consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.' Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.'
Slide Rules to Smartphones: This Isn't a New Problem
As recently as the 1960s and early 1970s, engineers and astronauts relied on slide rules for complex math calculations like those presented in the film Apollo 13. Unlike the calculator and even ChatGPT which instantly spits out answers, slide rules force humans to still use their brains, sharpening one's mental abilities, approximation skills, and logical reasoning.
'Use it or lose it' is another famous saying apt to this discussion. Now that every smartphone comes equipped with a built-in calculator, there's little incentive for people from any walk of life to regularly use math skills. Without such practice, they often atrophy once we've completed our formal schooling. Ditto for applications like Waze and Maps. It's gotten to the point that many people rely entirely on their phones for basic navigation from home to work.
Are We Growing Too Dependent on Tech?
As far back as 2018, pundits warned about the dangers of cognitive diminishment due to an overreliance on artificial intelligence. Statesman Henry Kissinger was one such person. 'AI, by mastering certain competencies more rapidly and definitively than humans, could over time diminish human competence and the human condition itself as it turns it into data,' he wrote in a revealing piece for The Atlantic.
Less than 10 years later his prescience is disturbingly spot-on.
Much like the Internet's stunning ubiquity, AI is fast becoming the go-to tool of choice, not just for students and teachers, but for business professionals everywhere. Talk about necessity! Among other things, artificial intelligence now helps companies achieve unprecedented levels of productivity, including automating repetitive takes, improving customer service, personalizing marketing outreach, optimizing talent management, strengthening cybersecurity, and enhancing market research—to name a few.
But as Kissinger warned and the MIT survey reveals, there's danger here.
If students increasingly outsource thinking to computers, what will happen to future people? Will we end up like the pathetically helpless and overfed automatons floating onboard the Wall-E spaceship? Will other dystopian fare like Idiocracy come true?
Not if we wake up to the problem and do something about it. Now.
3 Ways to Use AI as a Second Brain, Not a Crutch
The AI genie is out of the bottle. Students, professors, and business professionals alike are going to use it. There's no stopping that.
What we can do is rethink our relationship to innovation.
We've heard about smart technology for more than a decade. Now it's time for what I dub wise technology: a strategy for how humans can use AI—without being used by it themselves.
Here are my top three suggestions.
Schooling's real purpose is not to get good grades. It's to actually learn. If you turn off your mind and turn on AI to do your assignments, you're the one who will suffer long-term. First things first: change your mindset. Avoid academic shortcuts. Instead, do the hard work to educate yourself. And don't just stop when you graduate. Carry that lifelong mentality to the workforce and beyond. There's nothing more important than developing your own faculties.
AI can boost your imagination, serving as the ultimate thought partner. It only becomes a threat to your cognitive abilities when you close your own mind to its genius. Instead, reopen it, using AI as a brainstormer and a collaborator. Leverage it as a force multiplier to develop world-changing ideas, products, and art, not as a talent calculator. The former requires your active participation. The latter relegates you to little more than an order taker.
We know AI hallucinates. It gets things wrong. This isn't only the reason not to just blindly follow AI. Pushing back against AI enables you to flex your own mental muscles. Doing so helps you learn the why behind the answers it gives you. This process strengthens your mental abilities, learning from an outsourced brain in a digital mentor/mentee relationship.
What a Wise Philosopher Can Teach Us About Smart Tech
More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates—a wise man himself—expanded people's minds by asking them a series of questions. His process was called the Socratic Method, and it led to the development of modern philosophy.
Nowadays we may look back at him and say, 'Wow. What a genius!'
Socrates didn't see it that way. Instead, all his intellectual searching led him to sagaciously remark: 'The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.'
Now as we stand at an inflection point with AI advancing by the second, people young and old would do well to adopt a similar wise mindset. Specifically, we must strive to be ceaselessly curious about our world and ourselves. After all, it's this very curiosity that enables AI's ceaseless intellectual growth. Now that's something we can learn from.