Will your ability to think well save you from thinking machines taking your job?

I repeatedly hear that the ability to think well is why humans will be in charge of the robots, and not the other way around.

As machines become increasingly intelligent, the conversation turns towards our unique human abilities. Our humanness. This is a way to protect ourselves from feeling less capable than the machines. We see ourselves as the cognitively superior species, and any threat to this hierarchy makes us look for signs of our superiority.

Consequently, we argue that machines do not think as well as we do — at least not as well as the best of us do. And at least not yet.

But everyone who argues that “great thinkers” will be safe assumes they are on the right side of the cutoff. They believe they have what it takes to be one of the few humans with the cognitive capacity needed in a world filled with thinking machines.

Whenever I write about strategic ability or intellectual capacity, every reader assumes they are already a “high-level thinker”. One of the best. No one has ever come back to me and said: “I’m working on developing these skills”.

Still, a large share of people today are reading less than ever, an even larger share is failing to understand complex systemic phenomena like climate change when they need it most, and many more struggle to take others’ perspectives, even as polarisation in society increases. We don’t seem to care about thinking better.

Yes, machines are also flawed in their thinking. But machines are still better than most humans at most types of thinking. My laptop is better than I at solving math problems, reading, spelling, understanding foreign languages and many other tasks. And we are currently putting human cognitive ability on a pedestal while constantly questioning machines’ thinking. “They appear conscious, but are they truly, and can they ever be?”

But the big difference is what we do when we find a flaw.

When an AI model miscalculated the number of Rs in Strawberry, it became a global strategic priority. Teams were assembled. Money was spent. Everyone was racing to ensure their next model would be more capable. Because when it comes to thinking machines, there are incentives for improved cognitive capacity. It makes commercial sense because there is competition and expectations.

But I never see anyone evaluate or improve their own cognitive abilities – or lack thereof – with the same intensity as we do for AI. The amount of money and time spent on improving our cognition is small. It might happen if it helps improve our mental health or makes us perform better at work, but the incentives to actively improve our own thinking are limited.

While some of us might enjoy getting better at thinking, most people seem deeply uninterested in thinking well.

This creates an asymmetry: there are strong incentives for machines to get better, while humans seem to think they are already great, with no further incentive to improve.

And this asymmetry makes it unlikely that we will stay in charge of the machines. Not because humans can’t think well, but because we’ve decided we already do.

Good morning, and welcome to the first email in a long time.

I don’t know how regular these emails will be; I’ll write when I have something to say. No rules. But since the world is upside down, there are quite a few topics to cover.

I’ll start with a personal observation: AI is making me stupid.

And as someone who is paid to think, I know this is not good.

Let’s start with some background:

Understanding and implementing emerging technology has been a large part of my job as a strategist for 15 years. AI is just the next technology to be embraced. I approached it like I’ve done everything else: developing a theoretical understanding while testing it in as many settings as possible.

I use lots of different AI tools in my daily life. I write code with Cursor and texts with Claude; I search with Exa and Perplexity and analyse data with ChatGPT.

Still, I’ve felt for quite some time that using AI significantly impacts my ability to think challenging independent thoughts.

1. I read the summary instead of the full article.

2. I ask for potential angles and outlines when writing a text.

3. I get data patterns on a platter instead of finding them myself.

And little by little, my brain degrades.

Self-reported cognitive degradation related to AI is not unique to me. Other knowledge workers experience it, too, according to a study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers (Lee et al., 2025).

The researchers surveyed 319 knowledge workers about their critical thinking efforts when using generative AI across 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks. This is one of the first studies on this topic, but it is unlikely to be the last.

You should read the paper (to keep your brain from rotting), but here are a few quotes:

“Confidence in AI is associated with reduced critical thinking effort, while self-confidence is associated with increased critical thinking effort.”

In other words:

• We think less critically when we believe AI is better than us at a task.

• When we are confident that we are better than AI, we think more critically.

However, as AI abilities continually improve, the space where humans are more confident than AI will shrink, making us think less critically.

Also:

“… while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving.”

This means that the researchers see a risk of our cognitive abilities to solve problems worsening over time if we rely on Generative AI tools to do those tasks for us.

I think the most interesting topic is the long-term risk of collective cognitive degradation. Are we at risk of becoming increasingly stupid as a society?

The researchers do not expand on this risk, I guess, since that would be speculative. However, they seem to think we should consider the risk of reduced critical thinking when designing Generative AI tools. They write:

“Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows. To that end, our work suggests that GenAI tools need to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers.”

This is interesting. As a digital strategist, I understand we will see a colossal AI wave impacting all aspects of society. And in many areas, AI complements human abilities rather than replacing them, such as cancer detection. That is great.

However, we also see a push to increase the use of Generative AI among the general population. Widespread digital technology usage has always been a good thing in modern societies. But is that the best long-term path forward?

Many argue that there is no difference between using generative AI, a calculator instead of pen and paper, or Google instead of an encyclopedia. Throughout history, technological tools have transformed our thinking without necessarily degrading our cognitive abilities. Suggesting that they change the nature of the skills we prioritise rather than diminish our intellectual capacity.

Still, I am probably much worse at solving mathematical equations today than without the calculator. Because of the calculator, solving equations is not something I practice regularly.

We should probably reflect on the skills we hand over to machines, even more so when machines rapidly overtake average human performance on a significant share of the tasks.

I’m not saying this because I worry about jobs. I’m saying this because I worry about human abilities.

Humans have thrived in this world due to our cognitive abilities. But our brains are lazy, so outsourcing a lot of thinking might be tempting. And what happens if we don’t practice thinking?

Outsourcing tasks to AI makes perfect sense in a world obsessed with efficiency. There's no doubt that using AI increases my productivity - how could it not when I'm essentially delegating work to a tireless machine that often matches my own output quality?

But efficiency isn't everything. As someone who thinks for a living, I'm increasingly concerned about what we lose when prioritising speed over cognitive development. The parallel with social media is telling: despite clear evidence that excessive scrolling damages our ability to form meaningful relationships, we spend over two hours daily on these platforms.

This pattern of choosing convenience over capability should worry us. Will parents limit their children's AI use to protect their developing minds? Will specific professional or educational communities start rejecting AI tools to preserve their cognitive edge? These aren't theoretical questions – they're choices we must make soon.

The hard truth is that most of us are terrible at making choices that benefit us in the long run, even when we understand the consequences. Our brains are fundamentally lazy, always seeking the path of least resistance. And that's what makes AI so seductive – and so precarious. It's not just another productivity tool; it might be the ultimate enabler of our cognitive laziness.

I don't have the answers.

But I know that every time I let AI do my thinking, I'm choosing the kind of thinker I want to be. Maybe it's time we all started making that choice more consciously.