An Opinion Piece by Sam Cardoza

Written without generative AI.

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Author’s Note: This essay intends to scrutinize my views on the use of generative AI for tasks which are deeply personal and, in my opinon, 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 and interchange on the topic.

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There are two common threads I’ve noticed in every psychology article I’ve read 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 back 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. With infrastructure costs so greatly outweighing revenues, the tech oligarchs behind these bots have a vested interest in ensuring they succeed in the long term. 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 AI, and use it infrequently or not at all. Logically, then, creating 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 AI investments. Could it be then, that the abundance of psychology articles touting the beneficial use cases of AI are not entirely authentic in their assessment of AI’s 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 sparked it. Through brainstorming, we structure and organize our thoughts, and in this process use our discernment to whittle down the course of action we take to solve a problem, or express a creative urge. Already we see the value of engaging in the process of brainstorming – itstrengthens 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 the atrophy of these cognitive faculties, a damage perhaps more profound is occuring. 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 plan we arrive at 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 – the creative urge which underlies 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 – that the specific action we choose in the end is a reflection of our identity, and its expression becomes our unique personality.

By relegating this function to AI, we no longer guide the process from trunk to fruit. The hard work of climbing, and the vital role it plays in strengthening our sense of self and creative spirit, is lost. The AI gives us, instead, fives fruits to choose from, or perhaps ten if we prompt it to. But the inner navigation of our own psyche is no longer activated. The AI performs this work for us, analyzing what it knows of our personality, and using its own reasoning to select the optimal fruit. Are any of these fruits close to the one fruit among thousands we arrived at 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 process – but not something arrived at through the living, creative process which happens in a human mind. This is the fundamental difference – the AI, by looking back on our mind and performing its own analysis, bypasses the internal connection we create between our desires and their final expression. This is radically different than the cognitive offloading of the past (for example, a google search) in that, when AI brainstorms for us, the living stream of consciousness is severed. In that severance, something fundamental to the art of being human is lost.

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, unless a person’s career is important to their identity, AI brainstorming in the workplace does not pose the same spiritual risk as it does in matters closer to the heart. While I personally find its use unpleasant the workplace, I recognize its usefulness for efficiency, and also acknowledge that AI “levels the playing field” for marginalized people who use it to access the norms of the dominant culture 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 choose to engage with on a deeper level. And there are medical and scientific applications of AI which could open 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 the individual 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 we do, the better.

Why, then, do so many psychology articles normalize it? Certainly, the psychology research community does amazing work, and I don’t wish to discredit decades of research which has served to benefit humanity. But why is their focus on specific AI harms which are well documented, but not the net effect of AI brainstorming as a whole? One could certainly point to the newness of AI, and the fact that the process I describe takes time to see its negative effects. 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 banks on 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 the most compelling argument, to me, is found in the deep roots of tech oligarchs 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. Call me old fashioned – but I like to believe in our messy, mortal human bodies – and their imperfect brains. My core vision of the future is not one of transcending our humanity, but embracing it, including the arduous, beautiful, and messy process of being a human mind, in a human world, with a human future to look forward to. Because being human is messy. And so is our cognition. We connect our inner feelings to creative action imperfectly, and in community, incorporating the imperfections of not just one human, but many. And in a strange way, this net of imperfections becomes our strength. They make us human. 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, our social circles, and our sense of self in pursuit of machine-like perfection?

And one final consideration which should not be overlooked – can the 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.

Sam Cardoza thinks about these things too much, probably, and wrote this between July 14th – July 16th, 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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