In 2025, we’re chatting with AI more than we chat with our friends. From asking it to write cover letters to getting recipe ideas or fixing code, AI tools are fast, useful, and increasingly embedded in our everyday lives. But here’s the deeper question: while AI is getting smarter, are we getting duller?
A recent study by the University of Tokyo, reported by MSN, reveals that relying on AI chatbots can reduce brain activity in key areas responsible for decision-making and critical thought. Brain scans from the experiment showed that participants who leaned on AI suggestions demonstrated significantly lower activation in the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain linked to thinking, focusing, and solving problems.
Yes, AI helps us move faster. But it also tempts us to think less.
🧠 The Dangerous Comfort of Convenience
We’ve unpacked this dilemma before in Is ChatGPT Making Us Dumber? and AI Makes Me Stupid—and I Love It. There’s something undeniably addictive about offloading effort to a sleek, responsive algorithm. Why spend 20 minutes reflecting when you can just type “give me 5 life lessons about resilience” and get a TED Talk in 5 seconds?
The problem? Cognitive atrophy doesn’t come with alarms. It arrives quietly—when we stop double-checking, when we no longer wrestle with hard questions, when creativity starts sounding like a template.
🇵🇭 For the Filipino Mind: What Are We Trading?
Filipinos are known for diskarte—ingenuity under pressure. That creative survival instinct built the side hustle economy, powered BPOs, and helped OFWs troubleshoot everything from tech to tantrums.
But diskarte requires critical thought, context awareness, and yes, even failure. When we become too dependent on AI-generated answers, we may find ourselves losing the very traits that made us adaptable in the first place.
Because what makes us uniquely brilliant—ang galing ng Pinoy—isn’t just information. It’s the way we bend it, remix it, and feel through it.
🛠 How to Use AI Without Losing Your Edge
This isn’t an anti-AI manifesto. At AIWhyLive, we believe in intentional integration. So here’s how to keep your brain sharp while still harnessing AI’s speed:
- Ask smarter questions – Don’t settle for generic prompts. Push AI to challenge your assumptions.
- Do your own thinking first – Use AI to refine, not define your ideas. Start with your perspective, then enhance.
- Edit aggressively – Don’t just copy-paste. Rewrite, reshape, and reown the work.
- Use friction as feedback – If something feels too easy, ask yourself what you’re not seeing.
AI is brilliant—but your brain deserves a workout too.
🔍 Final Thought: Don’t Let the Machine Be the Main Character
You are not here to be a passive user. You’re here to create, to question, to shape the narrative—not just accept one.
So yes, chat all you want. But if AI starts becoming your main decision-maker, your primary thinker, your emotional compass, then something’s off. The smartest tools in the world mean nothing if we forget how to think without them.
In the age of powerful machines, the most radical thing you can do is still be deeply, intentionally human.
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