Is AI worsening our thinking?

Azeem poses core questions about AI's ambient role and whether it helps or harms deep thinking.

Play episode from 00:59

chevron_right

Transcript

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years.

Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic.

To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/
-----

AI has become so embedded in how I work that I can no longer cleanly separate it from my thinking. That raises a question I find genuinely unsettling: is intensive AI use making me a sharper thinker, or quietly doing the opposite? In this episode I pull back the curtain on my full research and writing process — the custom tools, the friction points, and the places where I'm still not sure I've got it right. For Ezra Klein, having AI summarize material is a disaster for original thought. But my AI systems are designed to protect the cognitive work that has to stay human, while they handle everything else. Knowing where to draw that line turns out to be the hardest and most important question.

I covered:

00:00 - Is AI worsening our thinking?

02:35 - Ezra Klein on AI and the death of original thought

04:02 - Cognitive offloading vs cognitive surrender

09:20 - Signal detection at scale

11:06 - Why I use several AI personas to scan for different insights

13:37 - AI tells me what NOT to think about

16:25 - The value of quietness

19:07 - Small notebooks, small ideas

20:01 - Writing reveals what you don't yet know

23:24 - The golden thread

25:20 - Speaking drafts aloud