AI Will Make Us Dumb? We Said That About PowerPoint Too
How to stop tools from flattening our thinking
TD;LR: We’ve seen this movie before. AI isn’t making us dumb. Bad habits are. Just like PowerPoint didn’t break thinking in 2003, AI isn’t doing it now. What matters is how we use the tools—not the tools themselves.
The AI panic that smells a lot like 2003
We’ve seen this before.
In 2003, it wasn’t AI people blamed for making us dumb. It was PowerPoint.
Critics like Edward Tufte called it “evil.” Commentators warned it would flatten ideas, dumb down complex thinking, and train us to present bullet points instead of arguments. Some even linked it to the Columbia disaster because critical information got buried in a sea of corporate slide nonsense (read this article from the Atlantic if you don’t believe me).
Today, AI is the new scapegoat. Headlines scream that AI will rot our brains, deskill us, and make us forget how to think. There’s even a phrase for it: deskilling by delegation.
That MIT study everyone cites? It showed that when people used AI for tasks like writing or brainstorming, their output got smoother but less original. The fear is that AI will do our thinking for us — and that we’ll stop thinking for ourselves.
But here’s the reality: tools don’t make us dumb. Lazy use of tools does.
PowerPoint didn’t destroy thinking. People did, by hiding bad ideas behind slick templates and skipping the hard work of crafting real arguments.
AI will do the same if we let it because we’ll be tempted to let it smooth over the hard parts of original thought.
The problem isn’t the tool, it’s how we use it.
Tools don’t make us dumb. Lazy use of tools does.
We all want shortcuts. It’s human. But when we hand off the hard parts of thinking—structuring ideas, weighing trade-offs—to templates, slides, or AI, we risk flattening our ideas.
If you want AI to sharpen your thinking:
Treat it like a sparring partner, not a crutch. Don’t just ask for ideas. Ask it to tear yours apart. I once pasted in a “foolproof” idea for a new HR process and watched AI flag assumptions I didn’t even know I was making. Brutal—but useful.
Ask for fresh angles. I dumped notes on an internal comms mess into AI and asked for three new ways to see the problem. It helped me let go of my first (mediocre) idea.
Stress test your thinking. Ask for counter-arguments, edge cases, opposing views. It’s like a debate prep session without the awkward silences.
Summarize, then question. Sure, let AI condense the data. But then ask: what’s missing? What’s uncertain?
Treat AI like a teammate. When the output’s meh, don’t move on. Coach it. Give feedback. Invite it to ask you questions. Try: “What would you need to know from me to give a sharper response?” or “What questions should I be asking about this?”
👉 Want some ready-to-use prompts to sharpen your thinking? Check out my AI thinking prompt pack — copy-pasteable, field-tested.
What we should really worry about
If we want to keep our thinking sharp, the answer isn’t banning AI (or PowerPoint). It’s teaching ourselves and our teams to use these tools well.
Check your defaults. Are you asking AI to help you think, or to do your thinking for you?
Don’t skip the hard parts. AI can generate ideas. Shaping and deciding? That’s on you.
Watch for the flattening. Polished doesn’t mean good.
AI isn’t making us dumb. Bad habits are. Let’s fix those instead.
Good points.
Being realistic I still believe that just like TV, Internet, PowerPoint - AI will make many people dumber and some people smarter.
The choice is always on us - do we use it in a smart way or dumb way. Usually the smart way requires some effort, so many people use tools the easy way.
Good read!