Keeping My Brain In the Driver's Seat

I have a confession to make. I’ve been using AI a lot lately. Like,  a lot. I joined Claude’s pro tier last month and have been blown away by its usefulness. In a matter of weeks it tore through the to-do list that’s been hanging over my head. Tasks that seemed laborious before are now done in a matter of minutes, rather than days, thanks to Claude's many connectors. On the surface, this is excellent news for my productivity. However, after only two weeks I’ve already caught myself falling into the trap that I knew existed: I started using it to outsource my thinking.

Hear me out, ok. I’ve been looking for a job for a long time. It’s a brutal market right now for creatives. We have to deal with AI interviewers and long, unpaid skills tests, so I think I can be forgiven for having Claude answer some of the more inane application questions like “what growth challenge do you love to tackle and what’s your approach?” Claude can write this for me in five seconds and I highly doubt anyone cares or can even tell the difference. So what’s the big deal? Why am I even writing this piece?

Because…I'm a writer. And it scared me how quickly I was willing to reach for AI for a writing-related task just to save myself a few minutes and a small amount of effort. It’s a reminder to myself to be careful. AI is a tool I will occasionally use, but I don’t want it to be my default. I’m trying to ease the burden on my brain, not replace it entirely. I’m honestly worried that this is the first step down a slippery slope that ends with all of us turning into the immobile, enormous blobs of human flesh featured in Wall-E – totally oblivious to the way things work and completely divorced from reality. 

I now know firsthand how tempting it can be to use these tools, which can sometimes feel like actually wielding magic, but there’s always a cost. I think of GPS, and how pitiful my mental map is of the city I’ve lived in for nearly twenty years. I shouldn’t need GPS to go somewhere I’ve been to half a dozen times, but GPS caused my mental map-creating skill to atrophy. What skills will these AI models make irrelevant? I like using my brain and I want to keep it sharp. 

I also derive a lot of my self-worth from my ability to excel at things like writing and editing. I enjoy learning new things and improving my abilities. To me, this is one of the most fun aspects of being human. The constant wheel of growth and self-improvement is what makes life interesting. So I’ll continue to do my own writing and to push myself to get better – not because of any anti-AI sentiment – but because I want to be the best human that I can be.