Reading Ethan Mollick’s Against Brain Damage made me rethink how easily AI can dull our own thinking. He argues the biggest risk isn’t rogue robots—it’s that we hand over our brains and stop working things out ourselves. His motto—think first, write first, meet first—is worth taking seriously.
I’ve felt this firsthand. During a Python course, AI became my go-to teaching assistant. Helpful? Absolutely. But “answer creep” set in—I started asking for solutions instead of wrestling with problems. Mollick also warns about the anchoring effect: once you see AI’s idea, it can quietly steal your sense of ownership and undermine creativity.
This temptation grows in a speed-obsessed world that prizes quick output. The pressure to deliver fast makes shortcutting almost irresistible.
Another takeaway: prompts matter. While building my ESL language-objective app, I saw how a well-crafted prompt pushes AI to explore multiple angles—and reveals its limits.
Mollick’s own example prompts for using AI as a tutoring tool mirror good what I've long-known as just good practice: asking students to explain ideas in their own words rather than parroting answers.
In the end, Mollick casts AI as a facilitator—a teacher or meeting leader who guides, not spoon-feeds. That’s the role I want for it too: a spark for deeper thinking, not a substitute. As his studies show, AI—no matter how smart—still hits walls when it comes to truly original thought.
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Inspired by Ethan Mollick, Against Brain Damage