To use or not to use AI

The whole world is revolutionised by artificial intelligence. From lessening the burden of flicking through the colossal web of information to selectively choosing what concerns us, from leaving behind the curse of spending time indefinitely looking perfect to acquiring it in no time, AI has done a great job of eliminating our supposed troubles and complex puzzles and frictions.

The question, however, is why and how much AI we ought to use. Is too much AI-use beneficial for us or otherwise? Is it addictive, costing us our heroic journey of leaping forward and solving things on our own? Does it make us look smart or otherwise?

A delicacy that people feast on 24/7, ChatGPT is an order of the day—a boon companion everyone stands cognizant of. Its magical outputs to even the dumbest of queries have become something godly to us, and everything outside its realm feels bizarre, a burden, resulting in dampening our curiosity to use our own minds.

In the past, say, humans would write letters on pages, sparking neurons; now, AI does letter-writing in the blink of an eye. If a mere paragraph is to be written, we take the help of AI. No pen and paper are needed. Just a request made to it and it’s printed out; putting an end to the ethereal aroma of handwritten creamy pages we once were accustomed to – moons, moons ago.

Students, especially, need to call into question this burgeoning trend of falling for the swiftness of AI in providing solutions to a certain conundrum. Becoming overly dependent on it reeks of sloth and sluggishness. Something spirit-dampening and curiosity-murdering. The vast expanse of our cognition and critical thinking abilities remain unused – and it’s indeed not something we should cherish.

Tailpiece:

When could we use AI? At times when its use is genuinely justified, which means without threatening our capabilities to learn, draft, research, write, and so forth. We don’t ask it to do a job for us, but a certain petty difficult chink of it partially so it may not undermine our mental faculties and inquisitiveness. This is how a civilized human should think.

AI could be helpful, or it may make us slaves to it; the choice is ours.