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🇳🇵 Nepal /Culture & Society

Learning AI, unlearning AI

From Kathmandu Post · () English

Summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Sources not specified Context piece
  • The author realized the greatest threat of artificial intelligence was not to their career but to their own mind.
  • Generative AI systems offer to do thinking for users, bypassing the essential struggle that leads to genuine understanding and personal thought.
  • Unlearning AI involved slower, more deliberate tasks like reading and talking to people, ultimately leading to sharper ideas and actual writing.

For two years, the author immersed themselves in artificial intelligence, testing models and anticipating its future impact. However, a year of "unlearning" AI led to a profound realization: the technology's greatest threat was not to their profession, but to their own cognitive processes.

The greatest threat AI posed was not to my career, but to my mind.

— the authorReflecting on the personal impact of extensive AI use.

The shift began with uninstalling ChatGPT from their phone. Initially perceived by friends as an anti-technology stance, the author's motivation was to reclaim a disappearing part of themselves. The convenience of AI tools, from answering queries to drafting emails, gradually eroded the user's own thinking process. The author observed a dangerous transition where the question shifted from "what do I think?" to "what does AI think I should think?"

Eventually, the question stops being “what do I think?” and becomes “what does AI think I should think?”

— the authorDescribing the subtle shift in personal thought processes due to AI reliance.

This "cognitive offloading," as psychologists term it, sacrifices the essential friction of learning. The author argues that genuine understanding is built through struggle, confused students, rewritten paragraphs, and abandoned drafts are crucial to making ideas one's own. Generative AI, by offering a path without this friction, risks eliminating the process of thinking itself.

For centuries, good education has been built around a simple principle: struggling with an idea so you can make it your own.

— the authorExplaining the value of intellectual struggle that AI bypasses.

After deleting ChatGPT, life slowed down. Tasks that were once instantaneous now consumed more time, involving longer internet browsing, conversations, and reading instead of seeking summaries. While initially fearing a decline in intelligence, the author soon found their ideas becoming sharper and their arguments more robust because they were earned through personal effort. This led to a rediscovery of actual writing, not just text generation, emphasizing writing as a process of discovering beliefs and growing one's mind through revision and conversation between conflicting ideas.

My ideas stayed with me because I had earned them. My arguments became sharper because I had built them myself.

— the authorDescribing the benefits of regaining personal cognitive effort after reducing AI use.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Kathmandu Post. Summarized and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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