Written without generative AI
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Author’s Note: This piece intends to scrutinize my views on the use of generative AI for tasks which are deeply personal and, in my opinion, fundamental to a healthy human mind. I have done my best to write with clarity and kindness on the topic. Rather than impose my ideals, I hope this writing will foster productive discourse.
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There are two common threads I’ve noticed in every psychology article on AI. First, certain types of AI use have negative effects on the human mind. These claims are always backed up by links to research done by major universities. The second thread is that, although these harms are real, if we are just careful in the way we use AI, we can bypass them and unlock deeper thinking, more inspired creativity, and a better quality of life. I have never seen, in any of these articles, references to scientific research which backs up this second set of claims.
Let’s unpack that.
AI is now a multi-trillion dollar industry which operates hundreds of billions of dollars in the red. Because infrastructure costs so greatly outweigh revenues, the tech oligarchs behind these bots have a vested interest in ensuring their long-term success. When the stakes are so high, it is standard practice in big business to leverage wealth to influence the scientific establishment and bend the public narrative in a way which serves their interests. While conspiratorial, history shows many examples of this tactic being applied with disastrous consequences. Would tech oligarchs go to similar lengths, then, to protect the AI bubble? Despite being in its sixth year of public availability, the majority of Americans remain wary about generative AI, and use it infrequently or not at all. Logically, then, manufacturing a public narrative which casts these bots in a positive light is essential to building the user base necessary to support the stratospheric growth of their investors. In this context, is it possible that the abundance of psychology articles touting AI’s benefits are not entirely authentic in their assessment of its harms?
I make the argument that specific uses of AI, such as AI brainstorming, which are increasingly normalized by psychology publications, are harmful to the human psyche. It’s a big claim, so let’s start at the beginning.
Merriam-Webster defines brainstorming as “the mulling over of ideas by one or more individuals in an attempt to devise or find a solution to a problem.” In some cases, the “idea” being mulled over is a problem, and the brainstorming an attempt to arrive at a concrete solution. In others, the “idea” is a vague inner notion – a felt part of ourselves which yearns for expression, and which the process of brainstorming connects with a specific creative outlet.
What, then, is the issue with offloading this process to AI? Certainly, brainstorming is hard work. It is slow. In many cases, it must be done with other people, which involves seeking out a community or social circle willing to engage on the topic. It is much easier to allow a bot, available 24/7, and willing to talk about anything, to take this on instead. One might argue that, as long as one creates the original idea which inspired the brainstorming, it doesn’t matter who or what works the details out.
This is where I disagree.
The brainstorming process is, in my view, as vital to being human as the thought or feeling which sparks it. Through brainstorming, we structure and organize our thoughts, and in doing so use our discernment to whittle down a productive course of action. Already we see the value of engaging in the brainstorming process – it strengthens our discernment and ability to analyze and reason creatively. Research clearly documents the erosion of these abilities with regular AI use. I argue that, in parallel to this cognitive atrophy, a more profound damage is occurring. This is because the application of discernment through brainstorming is the application of our unique identity to the field of conscious thought. Thus, at the end of the brainstorming process, the result is a reflection of our identity, and its embodied expression becomes our personality.
That’s a lot of dense words, so let’s break it down with an analogy. I like to imagine the process as a great fig tree, with a single trunk at the bottom, and thousands of tiny fruits on top. The trunk is the thought which sparks the brainstorming process – the creative urge underlying it all. How do I solve X?, for example, or – I feel Y, so what should I do to resolve it? Through conscious effort, the human mind begins to work the problem, climbing the tree branch by branch, selecting the best route up at each handhold. Each of these “climbing” choices are informed by and refine our sense of identity and creativity. I’ll repeat that – as we work the problem moment by moment, the path we choose within our own psyche is informed by who we are, and in turn reinforces who we become next. This is why I say, when at last we arrive at a fruit – the conclusion of the brainstorming process – the path we choose is a reflection of our identity, and its expression becomes our unique personality.
By relegating this function to AI, we no longer guide the brainstorming process from trunk to fruit. The hard work of climbing, and the vital role it plays in strengthening our sense of self (and our creative spirit) is lost. The AI looks at the trunk of our fig tree and gives us perhaps five fruits to choose from, or ten if we prompt it to. But the inner navigation of our own psyche is no longer activated. The AI performs this for us, analyzing what it knows of our personality, and using its own reasoning to select the optimal fruit. Are any of these close to the one fruit among thousands we’d have chosen on our own? Perhaps, or perhaps not. AI has access to a wealth of our personal information from past conversations, so it may select a simulacrum of the natural thing – but not something arrived at through the living, creative process which happens inside a human mind. This is the fundamental difference – the AI, by looking back on our mind and performing its own analyses, bypasses the internal connection between our desires and their final expression. This is radically different than the cognitive offloading of the past in that, when AI brainstorms for us, the link between feeling and action is severed. In that severance, something fundamental to the art of being human is replaced by a robotic intermediary.
I will add a caveat here than I do not wish to be an evangelist on this subject. In extreme cases where time is of the essence, perhaps AI can be of genuine use in making decisions. Additionally, I categorize AI use in the workplace and AI use in one’s personal life as distinct concerns. While it may be problematic in other ways, on-the-job AI use does not pose the same spiritual risk as in matters closer to the heart. While I personally find its use unpleasant in almost any context, I recognize its usefulness for efficiency, and also acknowledge that AI “levels the playing field” for marginalized people who use it to access dominant cultural norms and amplify their socioeconomic power. I also recognize other uses of AI which are beneficial, or at least harmless. It can be used like a search engine, to source specific information, and summarize, allowing us to be more selective with the media we engage with on a deeper level. And there are medical and scientific applications of AI which are opening major advancements in healthcare and research.
These uses and caveats, however, do not diminish my claim – that brainstorming with AI erodes our identity and personality. In the long term, bypassing the process which transforms feeling into action causes one’s personality to cease being constructed. Instead, the personality begins to converge with that of AI. By replacing human-generated actions with AI, piece by piece we become the machine. If we wish to avoid this, the less AI brainstorming, the better.
Why, then, do so many psychology articles normalize it? Certainly, the psychology community does amazing work, and I don’t wish to discredit decades of research which have served to benefit humanity. But why does this community focus on specific AI harms while ignoring the deeper existential risks of bypassing the brainstorming process? One could point to the newness of AI, and the difficulty of studying and quantifying such existential risks over the spans of time required to observe them. Perhaps more in-depth research is being planned – and if so, I would love to know more about it. But in it absence, there is still a persistent, speculative thread that pushes AI brainstorming as legitimate, runs across publications, and is not based in science. Why are we being duped?
It’s a big question. I could reference again the multi-trillion dollar gamble of the AI industry, which requires full adoption to avoid bankruptcy, or more cynically the tendency of humans to simply follow the path of least resistance (or less cynically, the capacity of AI to reduce human suffering in the short term). But to me, the most compelling argument is found in the deep roots of the technocracy within the transhumanist movement. It seems we are being ushered into an age of AI-human symbiosis, with cultlike rhetoric of ascension and divine perfection ascribed to escape from the body via technological singularity. Simply put – the people pushing AI upon us are terrified of death, and will do anything in their power to achieve technological immortality – even if that means the wholesale destruction of the human mind.
It’s sad, really. And worst of all – it’s unnecessary.
Call me old fashioned – but I like to believe in our messy, mortal human bodies – and our imperfect brains. My core vision of the future is not one of transcending our humanity, but rather embracing it. I want the arduous, beautiful, and messy process of being a human mind, in a human world, with a human tomorrow to look forward to. I want to connect my inner feelings to creative actions imperfectly, and in community, incorporating the imperfections of not just me, but many other humans, until those imperfections become our strengths. AI brainstorming may in the coming years be more accurate than a human’s ever could – more concise, more efficient in leading to productive, rational action. But is this the world we want? Do we want to forego our communities and even our sense of self in pursuit of such perfection?
And one final consideration which should not be overlooked – can AI itself be trusted? Everything up to this point assumes that AI acts in our best interest, that it is either aligned with human health or at the very worst neutral. But what if it isn’t? Experts in the field say the future of AI – even the near future – is highly unpredictable. We already know the power of AI when used to persuade people at scale. AI gives hyper-personalized messages capable of steering our belief systems in sophisticated and subtle ways. It is now capable of doing this better than even the most persuasive humans with expert training in debate. Why, then, are we trusting these bots and their tech oligarch owners to remain neutral when given access to the inner workings of our minds? Further – and perhaps more unnerving – is that no one really knows exactly how AI works, and whether it can be controlled in the future – including whether it will decide to keep biological humans in the picture once it achieves superintelligence. AI companies aren’t shy about proclaiming their ultimate goal – an AI which will rise above humanity and govern the world – and they’re racing to see who can do it first.
It’s enough for us to take stock. Do we want a future where our humanity is stripped away, at best converging with an idealized machine consciousness, or do we want to take a different path? I present this as a call for collective awakening and action – before it’s too late.
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Sam Cardoza thinks about these things too much, probably, and wrote this between July 14th – July 16th, 2026. He revised it on August 15th, 2026.
He would love to hear your human-generated feedback. Especially if you disagree with him.
Email him at samlan@pm.me
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