In a recent Forbes article, the author argues that AI — powerful and useful as it is — can also “engender human stupidity” when people begin to rely on it blindly rather than thinking for themselves. The piece uses the example of aviation safety: regulators now use AI to spot traffic‑pattern risks that human observers miss, but even in that high‑stakes domain, experts caution that AI results must be verified. Overreliance without oversight could lead to serious errors.
The core problem is that generative and probabilistic AI systems can hallucinate, produce plausible‑looking but incorrect output, or overlook context and nuance. As the article notes, legal briefs generated by AI have sometimes included completely fabricated precedents, yet appear convincing at first glance — a phenomenon that “outsourcing thinking to AI” can exacerbate.
This trend doesn’t just risk isolated mistakes — it arguably erodes our cognitive capacities over time. When people default to AI for reasoning, analysis or content creation, there’s a danger that critical thinking, memory, judgment, and intellectual rigor wither. The article warns that if humans stop questioning AI outputs — accepting them as “good enough” — we may gradually lose the very faculties that define human reasoning.
The takeaway: AI should be used as a tool — not a crutch. Users must maintain skepticism, always “trust but verify,” and take active responsibility for validating AI‑generated output. Especially in high‑stakes fields (law, aviation, medicine, journalism), human oversight, ethical responsibility, and critical analysis remain indispensable.
