We’ve Had This Conversation Before
You’ve probably heard someone say that AI is making us stupid. That we’re outsourcing our thinking. That something fundamental is being lost.
They might be right. But here’s my view: what we learn changes, not whether we learn. The tasks are different now. The requirement to develop judgement is not. The reps still happen. They’re just different reps. Critical evaluation rather than synthesis from scratch.
It’s also worth knowing that we’ve had this exact conversation before. Many times.
“This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory… You offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.”
Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus
“Abundance of books makes men less studious; it destroys memory and enfeebles the mind by relieving it of too much work.”
Hieronimo Squarciafico, Venetian editor
The French statesman Malesherbes railed against the fashion for getting news from the printed page, arguing that it socially isolated readers and detracted from the spiritually uplifting group practice of getting news from the pulpit.
“They impair the mind’s general powers of resistance, which lays the mind open to error and the heart to seduction.”
Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Doctors warned that cycling caused “bicycle face”—a permanent disfigurement from the strain of riding. Medical journals claimed women risked infertility and uterine displacement. One historian noted that cycling was viewed as “an indecent practice that could even transport women into prostitution.”
Dr. A. Shadwell, “The Hidden Dangers of Cycling,” National Review
A New York Times piece warned that listening to the radio too much would harm children because the body needed “repose” and could not “be kept up at the jazz rate forever.” One letter to the FCC complained that children “insist on listening to that variety of shock and are being developed into a race of morons and jitter bugs.”
“If the television craze continues with the present level of programs, we are destined to have a nation of morons.”
Daniel Marsh, President of Boston University, commencement address
When pocket calculators became affordable, the debate was fierce. Some states banned them from standardised tests. Sceptics predicted students would not be able to compute even simple calculations mentally or on paper. Multiplication, basic facts, knowledge would disappear. Calculators would become a crutch.
“My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.”
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, The Atlantic
At each step, something real was lost. Oral cultures really did have extraordinary memorisation skills that we no longer possess. People really can’t do mental arithmetic the way they once could.
At each step, something was gained.
At each step, the critics didn’t actually go back.
The people warning you about AI aren’t writing letters by hand, memorising phone numbers, or navigating by the stars. The line is always drawn just behind wherever you happen to be standing.
This doesn’t mean the concerns are wrong. It means they’re not new.