AI is changing how we think, not replacing it | Letters

Richard Thackeray and Phil Snell respond to an article by Wendy Liu on using artificial intelligence Wendy Liu’s thoughtful piece on AI and cognitive sovereignty raises real concerns about labour redundancies, the hype and the environmental cost (I avoid AI tools because thinking is supposed to be hard. It’s what makes us human, 24 May). But I think she allows those legitimate grievances to colour a separate and more interesting question: what is AI actually doing to the way we think? I use AI heavily and it has changed how I think, but not in the way she fears. It has made me more curious, not less. I now ask questions that I wouldn’t have known to ask and explore territory I would never have had time to reach. Yes, I offload research, but that offloading doesn’t empty my mind, it frees it. Liu worries that we are sacrificing depth for convenience. My experience is the opposite: the breadth AI gives me has led me to deeper questions, not shallower ones. Just as books didn’t make us lazy readers and Google didn’t stop us researching, AI is changing the shape of thinking rather than replacing it. That has always felt threatening in the moment and obvious in retrospect. What strikes