Will We Stop Thinking?
When I first started using AI I was a student. Now, in May 2026, AI has become an everyday part of life for many people, including myself. It’s different now, since I am not a student but a “professional.” I have accepted it now. I ensure to use it as a resource to help me do my job better and to do mundane and repetitive tasks for me. I have vowed to not let it write for me, to not believe everything it says and to still learn from primary and secondary resources, namely books. But I have genuine concerns. Concerns that, unfortunately, I believe will come to fruition in the future. Will people use AI to do most of their work? Will everyone with access to technology rely on it to write, analyze text, learn, make decisions, and think? Will we reach a point where we become obsolete, because we are literally using AI to replace our own brains?! Of course, one major conversation being had is whether it will replace our jobs, leaving us without a means to live. This is vital, but the philosopher in me worries more about AI replacing our brains, about it replacing authentic human creations, ideas, and art. About replacing our souls.
First-hand Observations
I’ve had serious thoughts about the effects of technology on us since phones became an extension of our bodies, and even before that. I remember seeing my younger siblings spend hours on their phones, at the ages of 10 and 8. It felt wrong, it felt like I was watching them lose their autonomy, their free will. When they would freak out because they couldn’t access their phones it became evident to me that this technology is dangerous and that it would cause harm, serious harm. I didn’t know better, so my reaction was to scold them and my mother but to also tell my mom to cancel their phones for good, or to limit them to an hour or two a day. I’d explain how new this technology was, how we don’t know the long-term effects of this instant and continuous dose of dopamine. My mom didn’t do much, and I would repeatedly scold my siblings and began to have resentment for them because they didn’t listen to me when I told them how bad and damaging the phones were. Later, it got my parents too. They were the ones constantly on their phones, allowing the technology to take most of their free time, or the many short periods of idle time from them. Then, I got off of all social media for almost a year in 2019 or 2020. I felt like I was an enlightened being while all those around me were mere slaves to their masters the phones. Then, and now, I felt that it was catastrophic. I didn’t know it would get worse.
AI has become an everyday part of life for myself and those around me. It has reached my siblings, friends, coworkers, uncles, students, and coworkers. The only ones that don’t seem to be using it much, if at all, are my immigrant parents, who are working class people. Though even they are not safe, because as I saw with the advent of smartphones, it is possible that AI will become part of their lives later than the rest of us. What strikes me the most about the use of AI from all those around me is not in the simple fact that they are using it—but in the way they are using it. I’ve seen my brother use it to reply with entire paragraphs to his girlfriend during an argument when he couldn’t bother to reply with his own thoughts or even read what she was saying in the first place! I saw a classmate use it in college to reply to his father, who I assume he had a strained relationship with, because he didn’t know how to reply to him. My friends and some family members have used it to fully complete their course work. A colleague has used it to complete ideas and plan for student events and programming. Coworkers use it to write emails. One that stood out to me was when an acquaintance used it to write his artist statement for a photographic piece that he displayed in an art gallery. I mean, if people are using it for something as personal as an artist statement, a message to your father, and an argument with your girlfriend, what will people not use it for? And these are my personal observations of those around me. I’ve seen cases online of people using AI as their significant others, having intimate conversations, using it to unclothe real people, and as I am sure you know, using it for LITERALLY everything. I am almost certain that there have been instances where students use it to complete their assignments and teachers use it to grade them. We are truly headed to a bleak place.
A Possible Future
It’s the year 2040. You look left to your brother, and you ask him what he thinks about the current state of the world. He’s on his phone as you ask him this and he opens ChatGPT (or Claude or whichever one prevails/he prefers) and he asks the model what the current state of the world is. He looks up at you and says something like “I think the current state of the world is _____” where he is repeating what the model told him. You just nod your head in desolate agreement. You look around you. Your entire family is at home. Your wife, kids, siblings, and friends are all over since there is no longer any work. It has all been taken by AI and Robots. You go check on your buddy who bought the latest entertainment gadget with this month’s government check. “I think I’m already bored of this one.” It’s now hard to find satisfaction and pleasure. Everyone has all the time in the world to do the things they wanted back when they had full-time jobs. They have time to hike, explore, watch movies all day long, play video games for days, sit around and do nothing, and whatever their heart desires, for the most part. Still, people can’t buy Lamborghinis or travel all around the world because they don’t have enough money with the universal basic income (UBI).
The people with the power are the once billionaires turned trillionaires who invested heavily in AI. They rule the world with the close guidance of their AI companions. They said we would all benefit from AI. And in a sense, they were right. The power and economic gap is greater than it has ever been in all of history, yet the overall standard of living has risen for all, and those living in “poverty” now have food, housing, and health benefits. But since this is not the topic of this paper, I will only ask, what is the purpose of humans when they no longer have to work? When they have all their time on their hands and close to no responsibilities or obligations. What do they do on a normal day? Where do they find purpose? Will they be happy? Those questions may become more pertinent in the next couple of decades.
Now, of course, this is merely one possibility of what the future will look like with AI. It could be that somehow it unequivocally makes life better for ALL. More satisfying, meaningful, and giving an overall better quality of life to everyone. I don’t know how this would happen, but it is a possibility. It is also possible that AI will reach a plateau and not fulfill its world redefining prophecy. Also, AI could completely take over, nuke everyone and somehow preserve itself and endure as the dominant life form on earth to then later conquer the entire galaxy. Who knows? I am much too skeptical of AI; and quite frankly pessimistic. That’s why, as I said before, I’d rather AI fails in one way or another and doesn’t reach the heights many think it will.
Lots of People Will Lose Their Credibility
AI is getting increasingly good at images, videos, coding, and basically everything. What happens when there is no genuine way to tell if videos, photos, documents, writing, code, etc. is real/authentic? How will we know whether someone is a phony? Will photos and videos still be able to be used as evidence? How do we stop nefarious acts like people faking evidence, legal documents, messages, videos, images, and art? Will we ever believe in anyone’s authenticity again?
I can picture a future where someone is attacked for whatever reasons (political, personal, etc.) and people will accuse their real work of being created by AI. They will use many techniques, especially if it’s a highly advanced attacker like a government agency to confuse the public and convince them that the work is not real. It could also be used to discredit someone in a legal case. This is without taking into consideration other nefarious acts like scams. The possibilities are endless. The saddest part of this is that we will most likely reach a point where we will have no reliable and certain way distinguish authentic work from AI created one.
Now, think of the other ways that AI will be able to be used to deceive, lie, and falsify evidence. 1984 would no longer be fiction. A ministry of truth would be—and is—possible. Entire societies could be made to believe a history, religion, and reality that is completely fabricated. Dystopian novels are seeming more and more likely to become reality, if we are not already in one.
Most People Accept AI
While there are the minority that refuse to use AI, most people accept it without much, if any, thought. “You are going to get left behind”, “There is nothing you can do to stop it, so you might as well use it”, “It’s the future, EVERYONE is investing into AI” are some of the arguments I have heard as the reason most people generally accept AI. Let me be honest, I use AI, almost daily, and my argument goes something like this, “I don’t want to be left behind, I want to use it to reach my goals faster, easier, and more efficiently. There’s nothing I can do to stop it, so I’ll use it and support it, even if I don’t support it. If I could press a button that eliminates AI, I would.” Yup, I am a walking contradiction. I know. But just because I am a part of the problem does not mean I cannot bring light to it (even though there is plenty of light on it already) and write my thoughts about how this same technology that I support will probably fuck us all in the end.
People know it is going to take our jobs, mostly benefit the upper class, make us all significantly dumber, and possibly be the cause of our extinction. Are we ever going to protest? Are we going to organize and use our power to outright deny using it? Maybe we will start to see the protests when the impact is evident, and the job losses are seen and felt. Maybe then we will begin to act, begin to protest and fight back. Will there be a Martin Luther King of the AI era? A Malcom X? Plack panthers? Are we going to do anything at all or are we just going to let it happen thinking we are completely useless when the truth is that us, the proletarians, the billions and billions being ruled, have all the power. I hope that when we see the real effects, the real dystopia forming, that then we will take action, that we will fight back and stop AI from taking over our lives and changing everything.
Conclusion
AI caught us all by surprise—at least it caught me. When I first started using it in Community College it would often get answers wrong and I couldn’t trust it. Then when I transferred to the University of Rochester, I began to use it inconspicuously, hiding it like if I were doing something sketchy. It was better, but it still made lots of mistakes. Now, at work and at home I use it almost daily. It’s no longer a thing I hide, and it now makes fewer and fewer mistakes, though they still happen.
These thoughts on the subject are pretty general and not novel. Most likely, many feel the same way that I do. Yet, I felt compelled to write about them, think about them, type them. Of course, there are many, many more subjects we can discuss regarding AI. How will it affect higher education and education in general? Will degrees become useless? How will it affect scientific progression? Will the progress be used more for good or for evil? Etc. Maybe I will write about these specifics later. For now, these are my general thoughts on AI and the immense affects it will have. I believe we should take this seriously and watch the developments carefully. I would say we should take action now and attempt to stop the progression in hopes to preserve humanity, thought the realist in me thinks that is naïve.