I think Artificial Intelligence has become more of a crutch than a tool in its short lifetime. People today want everything to be as easy as possible, and I feel like it might be for the worst.
I got my first phone in third grade; a Motorola Razr flip-phone. Part of the experience of having that phone was the strict set of rules my parents enacted to make sure I was smart with it. Don’t use it in class. Don’t give my phone number to anyone, even friends, without my parents’ permission. Don’t call a number you don’t know. Only use it to talk to family or in emergencies.
Now we fast forward three years to when I got my first smartphone. For the first time in my life I had unrestricted access to the internet, including games, web browsers and social media. Around the same time I got my new phone, internet use was becoming a regular part of school.
Naturally, with a new phone and technology becoming more prevalent, new rules were put into place. The one I heard most from not just my parents but every adult was, “don’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
Part of the human experience is doing difficult things and learning how to do it better the next time.
In 2026, AI has become as prevalent in the world around me as plain internet access was in 2016. At its conception, it felt like something adjacent to a more advanced search on Google. People were using it to do things more efficiently. But in the last three to four years, the shift from convenience to necessity has come quickly.
It makes me feel old when I say this, but why are people using it so much? Why do you need AI to generate you a grocery list? Why do you need AI to tell you the “best” way to organize your room? It feels like people are trying to find any reason at all to ask AI, like a sixth grader with a smartphone looking up whatever question crosses his mind. The most mundane tasks which typically require no internet whatsoever are now impossible to complete without first consulting ChatGPT.
I am especially concerned for our future and what we are building for the generations to come. I worked in a middle school for two years, and the difference from when I was in school a decade ago to now is staggering.
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In the most formative years of their lives, children are disinterested in learning and building new interests. They are being shown by adults around them that life should be as easy as possible, that you can just have AI do it for you. And the irony behind all of this is that the very people who told me “don’t believe everything you see on the internet” are now convinced that AI knows best. They believe everythingthey see on the internet, as long as it comes from AI.
It also makes me worried seeing how quickly some jobs are being replaced with AI. I see how there can be appeal to coding things almost instantly, or sorting through data faster than humans ever could. But what use will there be for teachers when people can ask AI anything they want to learn? Why consult a therapist when you can have a personalized experience with AI? Making things more efficient makes sense to me, but does everything need to be easier?
Part of the human experience is doing difficult things and learning how to do it better the next time. You cannot grow when you never fail.
Regardless of how AI impacts people’s jobs, I think a massive hindrance will be seen with human relationships. I believe that we will soon be seeing people who spend more time talking to their AI than other humans. With how much time people spend online, we are not far from that becoming not only reality but a norm. The importance of human relationships cannot be overstated, and AI is getting in the way of that.
I hope that soon we will be able to see what makes us human. We are curious. We ponder. We have the ability to think. Our thought processes are uniquely ours, and AI will not remove that from us, unless we let it. In which case, I’m sure life will be easier. Less meaning, less thinking, maybe less worry too?
At some point, we will become mediums through which AI models can talk to one another and they can begin thinking for themselves. If we outsource our thinking enough, we might be able to train AI to not need us anymore.
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