Will dependence on AI tools make us lazy?
Published: 05:03 PM,Mar 03,2025 | EDITED : 09:03 PM,Mar 03,2025
Since last year, almost everyone has become super creative. Everywhere I looked, every place I worked with and for, and every discussion I was involved in, there somehow seemed to be creative individuals popping up from nowhere. Virtually all students at schools, colleges and universities have started writing very insightful essays. Every working professional in organisations started producing wonderful reports in a very short time.
Almost all engineers started designing groundbreaking solutions at will. And almost every employee of the organisations I am associated with has started to come up with innovative ideas in an amazingly short period of time whenever requested. Amazing, yeah? No. It’s scary. Anything that is gained too easily is rarely valued and anything achieved too quickly is seldom lasting. Watch people who lose weight too fast, only to see them gain back that weight even more.
This change is not only here in Oman. This revolutionary change is all over the connected world. Amazing presentations are created on the fly; well-written and structured technical reports for almost every discipline are generated swiftly and impressive solutions to critical problems are suggested by even the least experienced employees. Is there a magic pill/tablet on the market that turns everyone into a superstar (or a genius per se)? No, virtually everyone has been using the same approach to this new creativity — artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools.
Let’s not deny it. AI’s revolution is surely making our personal and professional lives easier, faster and more convenient — specifically by automating our daily activities and surely generating creative solutions from different areas of our lives. However, the overdependence on these technologies will seriously impact our lives and the future generations severely. For example, critical thinking will decline, creativity will be reduced, skills will erode and many jobs (especially routine-driven ones) will be replaced; physical activity will reduce, social skills will weaken and lastly, cyberattacks (using AI) will increase.
This is bad and serious; and regulating the same is a need of the hour, especially on the ethical issues that may arise due to AI. The impact of the convenience and dependence of AI-powered tools will ultimately turn us to become lazy because of the effort it reduces or the effort it emanates for us to get things done. AI will automate and handle over 50% of many of the work activities by 2030, according to a report published by McKinsey & Company. Furthermore, a survey by Pew Research found that 65% of people rely on AI-driven tools for routine tasks, eg, writing emails to making decisions from the output generated by the AI tools.
Proof is in the pudding on the overreliance on AI-powered tools we see today, yet I by no means discourage the use or do not support the benefit that AI tools have brought to the table and our lives as a consequence. Productivity has literally been boosted and improved, complex problems are clearly being resolved and new opportunities are being created, to name a few notable ones. What, however, needs to happen and be encouraged is to have a balance on the usage and reliance in order to ensure essential skills are maintained. One needs to think of what happens if there is no connectivity. What happens if the tools are costly and out of reach?
So to answer my question on whether AI-powered tools will make us lazy, the answer is YES, especially to those who over-rely. The ones who would be most impacted are the future generations because they would be born with AI-powered tools being even more powerful, innovative, easier and even embedded into almost every object created and replaced from our lives today. What to do is educate on how best to use and how much not to rely on. Just like any tool, AI can be useful or harmful, depending on how they are used. Having continuous and necessary guidance on the use of this technology will surely help keep healthy individuals in the society. Until we catch up next week, always ask yourself before using an AI tool, is it making me productive, or is it making me lazy?
The author is the founder of Knowledge Oman
Almost all engineers started designing groundbreaking solutions at will. And almost every employee of the organisations I am associated with has started to come up with innovative ideas in an amazingly short period of time whenever requested. Amazing, yeah? No. It’s scary. Anything that is gained too easily is rarely valued and anything achieved too quickly is seldom lasting. Watch people who lose weight too fast, only to see them gain back that weight even more.
This change is not only here in Oman. This revolutionary change is all over the connected world. Amazing presentations are created on the fly; well-written and structured technical reports for almost every discipline are generated swiftly and impressive solutions to critical problems are suggested by even the least experienced employees. Is there a magic pill/tablet on the market that turns everyone into a superstar (or a genius per se)? No, virtually everyone has been using the same approach to this new creativity — artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools.
Let’s not deny it. AI’s revolution is surely making our personal and professional lives easier, faster and more convenient — specifically by automating our daily activities and surely generating creative solutions from different areas of our lives. However, the overdependence on these technologies will seriously impact our lives and the future generations severely. For example, critical thinking will decline, creativity will be reduced, skills will erode and many jobs (especially routine-driven ones) will be replaced; physical activity will reduce, social skills will weaken and lastly, cyberattacks (using AI) will increase.
This is bad and serious; and regulating the same is a need of the hour, especially on the ethical issues that may arise due to AI. The impact of the convenience and dependence of AI-powered tools will ultimately turn us to become lazy because of the effort it reduces or the effort it emanates for us to get things done. AI will automate and handle over 50% of many of the work activities by 2030, according to a report published by McKinsey & Company. Furthermore, a survey by Pew Research found that 65% of people rely on AI-driven tools for routine tasks, eg, writing emails to making decisions from the output generated by the AI tools.
Proof is in the pudding on the overreliance on AI-powered tools we see today, yet I by no means discourage the use or do not support the benefit that AI tools have brought to the table and our lives as a consequence. Productivity has literally been boosted and improved, complex problems are clearly being resolved and new opportunities are being created, to name a few notable ones. What, however, needs to happen and be encouraged is to have a balance on the usage and reliance in order to ensure essential skills are maintained. One needs to think of what happens if there is no connectivity. What happens if the tools are costly and out of reach?
So to answer my question on whether AI-powered tools will make us lazy, the answer is YES, especially to those who over-rely. The ones who would be most impacted are the future generations because they would be born with AI-powered tools being even more powerful, innovative, easier and even embedded into almost every object created and replaced from our lives today. What to do is educate on how best to use and how much not to rely on. Just like any tool, AI can be useful or harmful, depending on how they are used. Having continuous and necessary guidance on the use of this technology will surely help keep healthy individuals in the society. Until we catch up next week, always ask yourself before using an AI tool, is it making me productive, or is it making me lazy?
The author is the founder of Knowledge Oman