Topics / Artificial intelligence
Is relying on AI making people less capable?
As AI tools take on more writing, problem solving and judgement, people disagree about whether relying on them erodes human abilities, shifts people towards new skills, or does either depending on how the tools are designed and used. The question combines early, mixed evidence with differing views about which abilities are worth keeping.
Positions
- Yes, and we should push back: When people routinely hand writing, problem solving and judgement to AI, they stop practising those skills and gradually lose them, or never build them in the first place. Schools, employers and designers should push back to protect that practice.
- Tools always change skills, and people adapt: Writing, calculators and search engines all prompted fears that people would become less capable, yet each time people stopped doing some things themselves and became better at others. AI is the latest such tool, and people and institutions will adapt to it.
- It depends on how it is used: AI can act as a tutor that makes people more capable or as a crutch that makes them less so, depending on how it is designed and used. The priority is teaching people and designing tools to use it well, not avoiding it.