How to stop AI from making us stupider
Hari considers how Spontaneous Public Speaking could help employers can counter-act the observed trend that using AI is making people less capable of critical thinking.
Image generated by Canva
I’ve read three different studies in 2025 that suggest that prolonged use of GenAI has a detrimental affect on a person’s ability to think. They made the rounds under clickbait headlines about “is AI making us stupid?” but when an article about the most recent one popped up as “Yet Another Study Finds That AI Is Making Us Dumb” it feels like it’s time to take a closer look at this.
I will admit I’ve been skeptical of AI and the promises around GenAI.
I don’t like what the water and power consumption is doing to our planet. I’m not a fan of AI scraping online articles - some of which may even have been written by me - in order to regurgitate a more generic format. AI deep fake photo generation is a world of creepy crimes which are only not being prosecuted because the law hasn’t caught up with the technology yet.
But it has it’s uses.
I’m a big fan of auto-transcription and meeting notes services. It’s ability to process huge amounts of data in seconds is incredible. I used Canva’s image generation tool for pictures for this very blog. I’ve asked Claude.ai for ideas for LinkedIn posts - though I’ve never posted the output without a lot of editing and rewriting because try as it does, it’s still not as good as I want it to be.
But what I have tried to do, whenever I can, is only ever use it as a first pass, a starting point. Something to improve upon.
But these studies… if they’re right, it’s not going to be long before a person checking AI output might not have the capability to recognise if or how AI Output needs to be improved.
The truly scary thing about these studies is not only the laziness affect that using AI for analysis and (in most of the studies) essay writing has on the human brain, it’s how quickly it happens. As the MIT study states:
“Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.”
I’m told by colleagues who work in Higher Education that they are already seeing so many AI generated essays, that final exams are back in vogue, with students hand-writing papers under supervision, as under all other circumstances, AI generated content cannot be avoided.
The students of today are the graduates employees of tomorrow. But given the AI Zeitgeist of the past few years I doubt it’s only students who are demonstrating this AI related underperformance.
I know it’s the theme song of every generation to think the one following them has it easier or lacks work ethic or motivation. I’ve heard colleagues complain about their interns or grads, decry younger generations’ desires for work-life balance as laziness.
But what if, this time, it’s not jealousy prompting it.
People are becoming capable of less and it’s AI’s fault.
What can we do?
Short of going off-grid and committing to life as a subsistence farmer there aren’t many ways to remove AI from our lives.
But we can try and counter-balance the effects of cognitive offloading to AI by embracing training programmes which promote critical thinking.
This can happen at all levels of education - it’s long been said that we need to educate children in using their imaginations as well as learning their times tables. Ken Robinson has a great TED talk on the subject.
To prevent the decline of the human brain on AI we’re going to need to push people to do more, think more, embrace more. Without screens.
One of the best ways to do that is via spontaneous public speaking.
In-person. Face to face. No AI prompts or chats. Just people in a room, given a topic to talk about, and put on the spot to do it.
I first did this at a Toastmasters’ session, and I won’t pretend it was easy.
I had to talk for 2 minutes about a particular topic with no preparation and no research, just my memory and my wits.
But it helped that I was already teaching people how to structure an argument, how to hook an audience and make a point.
And the more I did it the better I got.
The brain is after all, like any other muscle. Use it and it develops, let it sit on its metaphorical sofa and eat AI-junk food and it dwindles.
If we push ourselves out of out comfort zone, take out brains to the gym, encourage them to push the weight that little bit more, we might be surprised what we’re capable of.
It starts with the workout of spontaneous public speaking. Who knows where it might end?
How to run a spontaneous public speaking session
Gather a group of colleagues for a SPS session. Don’t use phones except to keep time - it’s worth buying a visible timer. Make everyone turn their phones onto silent or off if you can.
Explain how this works - each person will speak for 2 minutes on a predetermined topic
If you’re a new group, you may want to have several topics/titles on display so people can think about them in advance. But after a sessions, reduce the amount of advance warning speakers get. Once people are familiar with the format, they should pick their topic out of a hat and have to start straight away.
Track time. I like to use green, red and amber cards to let people know how much time they have left.
Green = 30 seconds lefft
Amber = 15 seconds left
Red = time’s up! Finish your sentence
Give people feedback on their performance. I always try to offer one content based and one delivery based suggestion - but remember, people grow more from positive feedback, not negative.
Elect a winner and present them with a celebratory chocolate bar or other small trifle. You should also recognise “most improved” and “first timers.”
Repeat regularly.
Make sure you create a safe space where everyone feels comfortable and if necessary you can adapt the exercise to offer whatever levels of support the speaker needs.
Remember this is a learning activity, not a competition. Keep it fun and encourage people to support each other. Few people are good at this immediately - it’s a skill that needs to be honed.
