It was a few weeks ago when I asked an AI assistant to plan my weekend, and it gave me a perfect plan – a sunrise trek, a gluten-free brunch spot 14 km away, a podcast on stoicism, and light networking over artisanal coffee. And by Sunday night, I was exhausted – and amused. For it had been a perfect plan. For someone else.
It was then that it dawned on me – AI can plan anything and everything. But it doesn’t know when you want to spend the weekend at home in old pyjamas and watching reruns of a show you’ve already watched twice over.
The Productivity Superpower, We Didn’t Know We Needed
We are living through a golden age where Gen-AI can write code, craft emails, create presentations, analyze balance sheets, create artwork, summarize 200-page reports, and help you write wedding speeches without staring at a blinking cursor for hours. For millennials balancing multiple careers and side hustles, and Gen Zs navigating first jobs and digital overwhelm – it feels like a superpower. Tasks take minutes instead of days. Productivity graphs are smiling.
To be fair to AI, it is an incredible enabler. In the workplace, it speeds up research, helps marketers test copy variations instantly, helps finance teams with data modeling, and provides founders with the advantage of a small army. In personal lives, it plans trips, creates workout plans, and helps write wedding speeches without staring at a blinking cursor for hours.
There is no denying it – AI is here, and it is powerful.
When Assistance Quietly Becomes Dependence
But here’s the uncomfortable question – at what point does assistance quietly become dependence? The human brain is like a muscle. If you stop using it, it does not simply retain its strength. It atrophies. A simple example – a manager wants to write performance feedback for a team member. The words are polished – they are well-balanced, emotionally intelligent. However, have they actually reflected on the team member’s strengths and weaknesses? Perhaps not. The words are right; the intent is not fully owned. Or take another example – a young investor relies exclusively on AI-generated analysis for stock investments without understanding business basics. Perhaps the analysis is correct.
The prediction might even be statistically sound. But markets move on sentiment, policy shifts, and human behavior — things that don’t always sit neatly in a dataset. Judgment matters.
Even in everyday life, over-automation can quietly erode critical thinking. If we let AI summarize every article, draft every message, suggest every idea, we may start mistaking speed for clarity. Fast answers are not always deep answers.
