praveeninpublic

Everyone’s talking about how ChatGPT is dumbing us down. It might be true, but TikTok, reels, bangers on X, and meme culture are doing something worse: shrinking our vocabulary and, with it, our capacity to think.

My son couldn’t name a feeling, so he threw a tantrum. Two days later, he found the word. And the tantrums stopped.

That moment taught me what many forget: language is how we think, feel, and regulate our inner lives. This post is about how we're quietly losing that: The death of depth.

AI Is Getting Better. That’s Exactly the Problem.

Every time the model “gets it right,” something strange happens. You start trusting it more. You stop questioning what feels off. You begin to settle. And that’s where your skill atrophy goes to die.

Do not settle and become a curator, if you are using AI, ensure you are the one who is creating.

“Doing less and making people think” is exactly what I did.

I did something quick and made the readers of my graphic novel think rather than worry whether my art was real or AI.

What happens when we mistake bias for taste in a world where anyone can create?

Fair point. As a software engineer using Cursor, I’ve noticed it writes most of the code now. It’s easy to accept without review, which builds dependency. My role feels less like just coding and more like PM, tester, and reviewer combined.

We’ve started trusting AI like calculators. So, assuming it's right without checking. But LLMs can be confidently wrong, and once that habit sets in, even the “ChatGPT can make mistakes” warning fades into the background.

I cannot do math faster in my head, calculators killed the faster mental math, but if I have to calculate on my own, it's not fundamentally impossible. I still can do it, because it's just computation.

But, LLMs help us think, which is much more than just computing, that's more dependency.

We underestimate the biases of these models a lot. Let me give you a context.

When I had a tough time few months ago, health issues at home and spiring down, I took a break (technically ran away to breath, but with an intention to be back home and also the family of informed few hours later)

The whole journey, I used AI tools to think clearly, it worked, I strategized, planned, and came back home with an execution plan.

But, the moment I reached back home, things were different, but I adapted, AI was still helping. But at one point, it said “You need to walk away, pack your bag, take your car, tell no one can stop you.” That’s when I realize I need to stop listening to AI.

It’s more of when to listen and when not to listen is what matters. We cannot fully rely on what AI gives us, because it’s still heavily biased on its training data.

So, in this context, even if they use AI, it will be definitely the panel that would be approving or rejecting those laws. So, it’s still technically the humans who are writing the law.

I wish that we get a good platform that focuses on quality content and not just profit alone.

To improve AI from where we are now, quality will play a crucial role in it.