Y'all really out here NOT reading?
in this economy? at this stage in history?
I crashed out yesterday.
It seemed like every 5 seconds, I was reading about how much we risk losing human intelligence in the age of AI.
It all started when people were tagging me on social media about the latest Diary of a CEO episode on AI, featuring brain experts Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Terry Sejnowski. Their warning was crystal clear: without the proper education, guardrails, and resources, AI puts humans at a greater risk for dementia and other neurocognitive diseases.
This is why I believe if you are going to use AI, you should use it to extend your capabilities, not offload your critical thinking. This means :
cite checking its work
not blindly copying and pasting what it gives you
understanding your desired outcome for using the technology (AI can’t fix everything!)
determining what a human-first AI implementation plan looks like for you (a rule of thumb: remove drudgery, so you can do more deep work)
And so on and so on.
Artificial Intelligence is an umbrella term encompassing a range of capabilities, including computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and neural networks. AI has been around since at least the 1950s, but its generative capabilities, like ChatGPT, are fairly recent.
In the right hands, I’ve seen AI used to detect stubborn cancer cells, capture carbon more efficiently, and help detect missing persons during natural disasters quickly.
However, we’ve also seen instances of AI psychosis. This is why who is using the technology and for what end is more important than the technology itself.
The AI industry is firing off some warning signs.
Erich Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, recently published his Op-Ed in the NYT arguing “Silicon Valley is Drifting Out of Touch with the Rest of America.”
Mustafa Suleyman, one of the very few nontechnical founders in the AI race and the CEO of Microsoft AI, posted a blog warning the AI industry from developing “seemingly conscious AI.” The illusion that AI has consciousness is what is leading many humans to become emotionally and psychologically dependent on chatbots.
Meta is restructuring their AI division.
A recent article on the impending burst of the AI bubble in Forbes cited that CEOs are not getting a return on their investment:
“A group of MIT researchers surveyed over 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives, more than 50 companies and hundreds of senior leaders from January to June 2025 to conclude that 95% were not getting any return for their investment.”
GenAI, when used uncritically, will create a bifurcated society, one defined by thinking and unthinking people. When a society stops giving things much thought, deep thought, that is ripe conditions for authoritarianism to spring up and thrive. A tyrant will not have to ban or burn books if a great number of people are not even reading them.
The short-term gratification of an instant answer, one that doesn’t require making sense of, is great if you need help quickly, unclogging your drain, and you don’t have the $300 to hire someone to fix it.
However, offloading the valuable process of deep critical thinking, forming lifelong synapses in our brains, will inevitably lead to what I’d call The Great Cognitive Decline. We risk losing the very thing that makes us human, our experiences, memory, and intellect, all in service to instant gratification.
As I’ve said from the beginning, the 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report does note that AI skills will be increasingly in demand. However, of the 10 fastest-growing skills employers desire in the future, 7/10 are uniquely human skills.
*End of Rant*
I begin my series, "Critical Thinking in the Age of AI," by discussing James Baldwin, so it’s only right that I quote him to encourage all of us to read more.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
- James Baldwin
Reading reminds us of our humanity!
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I have a lot of curated nonfiction lists for you to choose from here: https://bookshop.org/shop/iamshaeo
Let me know what you’ve been reading lately (and if you haven’t –no judgment. You can start now! Just 10 pages a day makes a difference!)
Stay sharp and stay human in the age of AI!
with care,
shae