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Will AI Make Us Stupid?

Scott H. Young · 18 Nov 2025

Others here said this too

Solving a problem yourself, without searching or prompting, is a form of exercise -- the help makes you weaker.

Their wordsLearning requires an investment of effort, and AI will make us stupider if that effort is avoided.

Also said by Derek Sivers

Read the piece on scotthyoung.com ↗

6 korrents from this piece ↓

Scott H. Young did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Knowledge that lives only in a book or a machine is not knowledge you have.

    Their wordsKnowledge is dead if it’s not in your head.

  2. Our reading

    A skill being automated is not a reason to stop learning it: practising what machines already do is often the stepping stone to what only people can do.

    Their wordsVery often, learning skills that are automated in practice is a necessary stepping stone to cultivating uniquely human skills.

  3. Our reading

    You cannot learn to code by having a model write it: the mental models only come from writing programs by hand.

    Their wordsThe answer, I believe, is not too different from before: if you want to learn to code, you need to start by creating programs by hand.

  4. Our reading

    AI translation will stop you learning to speak a language, exactly as AI summaries stop you understanding a book.

    Their wordsSimilarly, AI translation will prevent you from learning to speak another language, AI summaries will block you from really understanding the arguments laid out in a book, and AI analyses of your personal problems will make it harder for you to think through solutions to your own problems.

  5. Our reading

    Solving a problem yourself, without searching or prompting, is a form of exercise -- the help makes you weaker.

    Their wordsLearning requires an investment of effort, and AI will make us stupider if that effort is avoided.

  6. Our reading

    Intelligence is becoming a choice rather than a byproduct of daily work: there will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.

    Their wordsThus my personal prediction is that in domains that are already largely under the powers of modern AI, such as languages, programming or chess, we’re going to see a divergence in human abilities.

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