AI, Technology, and the Death of Critical Thinking
Of all the great 20th-century dystopian sci-fi novels, Brave New World stands above the rest, in my opinion, for its prescient understanding of how comfort and apathy can be used to control a population. However, what if, in reality, we were instead controlled by mental laziness, the path of least resistance? It was bad enough that we stopped needing to know how to search for information on our own, thanks to search engines like Google, which removed the need for effort and, possibly, some discernment when verifying information. But how will a technology like AI affect us? Many think AI's danger lies in its ability to replace human workers. However, more and more, I'm starting to believe that the real danger is that people will, again, like with search engines, offload more of their cognitive function onto technology. I've already seen people use ChatGPT responses as confirmation for utterly false information simply because it told them something was true. However, these C...