1. Has it ever happened to you, that someone asks you a basic question and your first reaction is: “Why didn’t you just Google that?” or “Have you asked ChatGPT about it already?”
  2. In philosophy, there's something called the Extended Mind. When a tool becomes so reliable and seamless to use, the tool becomes an extension of your mind.
  3. For example a notebook, a calculator, or now AI. They are not just something you use, but something your mind relies on to function.
  4. The extended mind is about expanding our capabilities, and AI has allowed us to do that to a huge extent.
  5. What's the upside of extending your mind with AI? Time
  6. Hours and hours spent thinking, drafting, or designing are suddenly replaced by a few minutes of prompting. You are free to do your most creative and meaningful work.
  7. What's the price? Atrophy.
  8. Nothing deteriorate our writing skills and memory as much as AI.
  9. This is also known as The Crutch Effect: What you don't use, you lose.
  10. But losing something to gain something better is not losing, it's investing.
  11. GPS weakens our sense of direction, calculators make us forget arithmetic, and the agricultural revolution made our bodies weak.
  12. But GPS help us get home, calculators help us split bills, and agriculture feeds us every day.
  13. So yes, technology has a price, but it's a fair one.