{"id":701571,"date":"2026-05-29T05:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701571\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T05:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:52:13","slug":"ai-is-changing-how-we-think-not-replacing-it-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701571\/","title":{"rendered":"AI is changing how we think, not replacing it | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wendy Liu\u2019s thoughtful piece on AI and cognitive sovereignty raises real concerns about labour redundancies, the hype and the environmental cost (I avoid AI tools because thinking is supposed to be hard. It\u2019s what makes us human, 24 May<\/a>). But I think she allows those legitimate grievances to colour a separate and more interesting question: what is AI actually doing to the way we think?<\/p>\n

I use AI heavily and it has changed how I think, but not in the way she fears. It has made me more curious, not less. I now ask questions that I wouldn\u2019t have known to ask and explore territory I would never have had time to reach. Yes, I offload research, but that offloading doesn\u2019t empty my mind, it frees it.<\/p>\n

Liu worries that we are sacrificing depth for convenience. My experience is the opposite: the breadth AI gives me has led me to deeper questions, not shallower ones. Just as books didn\u2019t make us lazy readers and Google<\/a> didn\u2019t stop us researching, AI is changing the shape of thinking rather than replacing it. That has always felt threatening in the moment\u00a0and\u00a0obvious in retrospect.<\/p>\n

What strikes me most is the optimism she leaves out. For most of human history, serious intellectual inquiry was the preserve of the privileged few. AI is changing that. Millions of people can now bring genuine curiosity to hard problems, and we should encourage that. That seems to me like exactly the kind of development we should be fighting\u00a0for, not against.<\/p>\n

I guess it remains to be seen if AI will let us explore this as we want to and not how big tech wants us to do it. Maybe Liu can write about that\u00a0next, as it is a worry.
Richard Thackeray
Sheffield<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in full agreement with Wendy Liu\u2019s views on AI. As a (pre-AI) software engineer, I created some very successful products through hard work and thinking through every idea. I can\u2019t imagine releasing software generated by AI and having no clear understanding of its components. I wouldn\u2019t like to know if the aeroplane I\u2019m on is controlled by code untouched by human intelligence.<\/p>\n

As a musician, I see a parallel with tablature. I have always avoided the piano-roll technique to learn guitar parts. I don\u2019t want to play what, for example, Mississippi John Hurt played note for note even though it would sound good. I would much rather listen to Hurt and learn the songs by ear, interpreting them on the way. So my versions aren\u2019t exactly \u201cright\u201d, but they\u2019re mine and I can improvise on the tunes since they\u2019re not just muscle memory. In fact, Hurt rarely played tunes the same way twice.<\/p>\n

As Liu says, thinking is good. Maybe a piece that is self-created is a bit wonky, has malapropisms, unusual punctuation, bum notes and so on, but at least it\u2019s human, and I believe has embedded emotion that readers can feel, maybe subliminally, as opposed to\u00a0perfectly polished AI output.
Phil Snell
Otley, West Yorkshire<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wendy Liu\u2019s thoughtful piece on AI and cognitive sovereignty raises real concerns about labour redundancies, the hype and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-701571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}