A point of view in an age of AI
An answer can be available before I have properly understood the question.
That is one of the things I find most useful about AI, and one of the things I want to be careful with. I can explore an unfamiliar subject, compare approaches, and get help developing a thought. I can also move so quickly into a finished-looking response that I skip deciding what I actually think.
The possibility makes independent thought, creativity, and self-confidence feel more important to me. Not as qualities that make someone exceptional, but as capacities worth practicing when help is readily available.
Access is not the same as understanding
I do not think access to AI makes knowledge unimportant.
Having information available is different from recognizing what is relevant, noticing that an explanation is incomplete, or understanding when a conclusion does not follow. I still need enough familiarity with a subject to ask useful questions and evaluate what comes back.
An AI system can be helpful and fallible at the same time. Research on AI-supported learning has illustrated that assistance during a task and the ability to perform independently afterward are different outcomes. That distinction matters beyond the classroom too.1
For me, the opportunity is to use assistance to build understanding rather than merely borrow the appearance of it.
That might mean asking for an explanation and then trying to describe it without looking. It might mean comparing the answer with an original source, testing it in practice, or asking which assumptions would have to be true. The appropriate level of checking depends on the consequences of being wrong.
I want to finish the interaction more capable of thinking about the subject, not just in possession of something I can repeat.
Having something of my own to contribute
Independent thought does not require an idea that nobody has ever considered.
It can begin with noticing a detail that an existing explanation leaves out. It can involve bringing experience from one area into another, asking a question in a different way, or taking a familiar problem seriously enough to look at its circumstances.
Cars help me do that. My interest in them gives me concrete examples for thinking about utility, status, tradeoffs, and technological change. The comparisons do not establish that I am right. They give me a way to formulate a question that I can then examine more carefully.
Someone else might begin with nursing, cooking, music, coaching, or caring for a family member. The value is not that the perspective sits outside knowledge. It is that a person's attention and experience can help determine what deserves investigation.
I would not want a polished answer to make those starting points seem inadequate. An observation can be awkwardly expressed and still be worth developing.
Creativity with assistance
I do not see creativity and AI assistance as opposites. Tools can help someone get started, explore alternatives, and make work they would otherwise struggle to produce.
There are also tradeoffs worth examining. In a 2024 experiment by Anil Doshi and Oliver Hauser, access to AI-generated ideas helped participants produce short stories that evaluators rated more favorably, while the assisted stories became more similar to one another. That was a particular writing task, not a verdict on all AI-assisted creativity.2
The result gives me a useful question: am I using the tool to develop a perspective, or allowing its first suggestion to set the boundaries of what I consider?
One approach I want to practice is bringing something to the interaction before asking for a polished result. That could be a rough argument, an experience, a problem I have noticed, or even a disagreement I cannot yet explain well.
Then the tool can help me examine it. Where is the reasoning weak? What have I overlooked? What would a person with a different experience object to? Which parts are observations, and which are assumptions?
I do not need to preserve every initial idea. I do want to remain involved in deciding what survives and why.
Confidence without needing to be right
The kind of confidence I value is fairly quiet. It is the willingness to give an idea enough attention to find out whether it has merit.
It does not require assuming that the idea is important, announcing it as a breakthrough, or treating criticism as evidence that other people do not understand it. It also does not require waiting until someone more authoritative has already said it.
I can take a thought seriously while remaining open to changing it. In fact, I would like confidence to make revision easier. If my sense of worth does not depend on defending every sentence, I have more room to notice where the argument fails.
That matters when an AI response sounds more fluent than my own early thinking. Fluency can be useful, but I do not want to confuse it with a reason to abandon a question I have not finished exploring.
It matters in the other direction too. Agreement from a tool is not sufficient validation. A supportive response may help me continue, but the idea still has to make sense when I examine the evidence or try to use it.
Thinking independently is not thinking alone
There is a version of independence that becomes a performance of disagreement. I am not particularly interested in it.
A position does not become more thoughtful because it is unpopular. Expertise does not become less useful because I want to form my own view. Sometimes the most independent decision is to accept a well-supported conclusion instead of searching for a more distinctive one.
What I want to preserve is responsibility for the judgment. I can learn from someone, rely on their work, and acknowledge where they know more while still understanding why I find their account convincing.
Other people also provide something that a private line of reasoning can miss. They have to live with different constraints. An idea that sounds elegant to me may create work or discomfort I have not considered. Listening to that is part of developing the idea, not a surrender of independence.
Keeping contact with the subject
I think it is worth leaving some parts of a process unfinished long enough to learn from them.
That could mean spending time with the people a product is meant to help before defining its features. It could mean trying an activity before deciding what an ideal version should look like. It could mean writing down a question before searching for the most convincing answer.
I do not want that to become a rule against useful help. I want the help to remain connected to something I am actively trying to understand.
This brings me back to my decision framework. The A2 temptation would be to acquire a convincing expression of an idea without doing enough to understand or test it. The A1 choice would be to use whatever assistance is appropriate while remaining responsible for the result.
The outcome I hope for is not having to think without tools. It is becoming better at knowing what I think, what I do not yet understand, and what is worth exploring next.
Sources and notes
- Hamsa Bastani and colleagues. Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(26), e2422633122 (2025). ↩
- Anil R. Doshi and Oliver P. Hauser. Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances 10(28), eadn5290 (2024). ↩