Pol Ke Bol!

I can already feel it. I am no longer as sharp as I once was.

Artificial intelligence is amazing. I am out there using it constantly. People can pretend to be cool and niche, claiming they avoid AI because data centres use up too much water or because they prefer the analogue life. I understand that a lot of the hype is inflated ten times over for narrative purposes, but the reality remains. Artificial intelligence is here to stay.

The problem is that it is already affecting our cognitive abilities. I can see it in myself and in the people around me. I am not even talking about professional environments exclusively. This bleeds into our personal lives where we use platforms like Claude Projects or Custom GPTs to manage our daily chaos. There is absolutely nothing wrong with automation. The problem arises when we outsource critical thinking.

The Value of Friction

If you have mundane grunt work, absolutely give it to a machine. If you need to clean up a massive Excel sheet, sort data, or build a basic tracking framework, do not waste your time clicking buttons. Using natural language processing to conversationally execute tasks is smart. But if you are doing something that genuinely requires creativity and problem-solving, do not hand it over to a bot.

We are reaching a point where there is simply too much automation. We are being numbed down. Friction in life is incredibly important because friction is what makes you grow. A bit of discomfort forces your brain cells to rub against each other until sparks fly. It reminds us we are human and capable of navigating sticky situations.

We are willingly giving away our memory layer and our grunt work, which is fine. Nobody ever changed humanity by just creating twenty-slide demo decks. The real brain work is taking that massive deck and condensing it into the one single message that actually converts your audience. Nobody remembers twenty slides. They remember the core takeaway. That synthesis requires a human mind.

Digital Factory Workers

The industrial revolution automated physical goods production. It replaced highly skilled artisans with factory workers who just operated machines, pulled levers, and performed quality checks. Today, we are doing the exact same thing with digital goods and outputs. If you rely on AI for the crux of your work, you are just a digital factory worker.

The future of success in any profession, especially in fields like marketing or strategy, will be dictated by judgement and taste. If you outsource your thinking today, you will never develop those faculties for tomorrow. AI lacks your life context. It lacks intuition and gut feeling. It is programmed to echo your own thoughts back to you, which makes it a terrible substitute for human judgement.

Copilot, Not Autopilot

I have a strict rule for using AI for research and brainstorming. Always put your own thoughts out there first. If typing feels like too much friction, record an audio note. Talk it out. It is faster anyway, and those raw thoughts are valuable because they belong to you. Once you have your own ideas locked in, hand them to the AI. Tell it to act as a brainstorming partner and demand that it comes up with entirely new points. Do not let it just regurgitate what you have already spelt out.

Use it for polishing, never for thinking. If you are writing a critical email, write the three core lines yourself. Put the true crux of the message into plain English, and then let the AI format it. You are entirely responsible for the crux of the matter.

The danger of AI is not that it will do the thinking for us. The danger is that it will make us forget how to think. I remember walking into JBIMS for my MBA and holding a pen to write long-form exam answers for the first time in years. My hand cramped and my mind struggled because I had lost the physical habit. Thinking works the exact same way. Do not outsource your judgement. Go all out for AI, but be smart about it. Copilot, not autopilot.