AI

 That line cuts. Here’s the idea behind it, sharpened into an argument.

Why Using AI Makes You Smarter — But None the Wiser

AI is very good at making us smarter in the narrow, technical sense.

It helps us pass exams, debug code, draft arguments, and solve logic puzzles faster than we ever could alone. It extends working memory, reduces cognitive load, and supplies instant pattern recognition on demand.

But wisdom has never been about speed, correctness, or output.

Wisdom is about self-knowledge—and that’s exactly what AI quietly erodes.

Intelligence Without Friction

When you struggle with a problem, something important happens:

you encounter the limits of your own thinking.

Confusion forces reflection. Errors reveal assumptions. Effort exposes values: What do I care enough about to wrestle with? What kind of thinker am I when things don’t work?

AI removes that friction.

Instead of grappling with uncertainty, you skip to resolution. Instead of noticing where your reasoning fails, you outsource the reasoning entirely. You get answers without ever meeting yourself in the process.

You become more capable, but less aware.

The Illusion of Insight

AI can explain your emotions better than you can.

It can analyze your behavior, summarize your beliefs, even suggest life advice that sounds uncannily perceptive.

But that insight is external.

Wisdom isn’t knowing what is true.

It’s knowing why it matters to you.

An AI-generated explanation may be accurate, elegant, and useful—yet still bypass the slow, uncomfortable work of self-confrontation. You didn’t arrive there. You weren’t changed by the journey. You merely consumed the conclusion.

That’s not wisdom. That’s intellectual convenience.

Outsourcing the Inner Dialogue

Historically, thinking was a conversation you had with yourself.

• Why do I believe this?
• What am I avoiding?
• Where am I rationalizing?

AI replaces that inner dialogue with an external one.

And here’s the danger:

when the voice answering your deepest questions is always confident, articulate, and instant, your own uncertain voice grows quiet.

You stop listening for it.

Smarter Tools, Shallower Selves

AI optimizes for results.

Wisdom grows from reflection, failure, hesitation, and doubt.

One scales. The other resists scaling.

So yes—AI can make you smarter.

It can raise your performance ceiling and flatten learning curves.

But unless you deliberately slow down, question yourself, and reclaim the uncomfortable parts of thinking, it will not make you wiser.

In fact, it may do the opposite:

You’ll know more.

You’ll do more.

You’ll solve more.

And understand yourself less.

If you want, I can tighten this into a publish-ready essay, make it more polemical, or turn it into a short manifesto-style piece.