July 2026
I have been misusing AI.
I use it to bypass my thinking, but I now know better. AI is the world's best teacher, and I am able to employ it for any subject I choose.
I could surrender all of my thinking to AI. But what happens then? I get sloppy, my brain remains unchallenged and atrophies.
What signifies a great teacher? They lead you to the correct answer. A bad teacher gives up the correct answer, but it never belongs to you. The bad teacher removes friction. Friction primes your brain to remember. It becomes desperate to file the information so it doesn't have to struggle the next time.
You can unleash AI as a good teacher or a bad teacher. Deployed as a bad teacher, it diminishes your noggin. Ordain a good teacher, and you're adding petrol to a burning fire.
How do you deploy a good teacher? Never permit the AI to surrender an answer without demanding thought from you. Ask it to be Socrates. Get it to question you towards the right answer, never divulging until you've expended effort thinking.
Is this an absolute?
Of course not! Marching into the LLM age with one hand tied behind your back is folly. AI confers great power, but hands it to everybody. Judgement of how to exercise this power is skewed.
My job becomes judging when to struggle and when to relent.
A good heuristic for this is understanding my own knowledge. In areas I own, I'll gift AI carte blanche. Why? I can see its mistakes. My consumption becomes critique versus blind faith. My role is one of an active adversary and not passive recipient. The latter is the child following the pied piper, the former is the army general receiving intel.
Where I am in charge, I drive the questioning, because I know what a good answer is and can interpret it as thus. AI is my minion and I need to be happy with what it's telling me before I let it go to war. But once I am, then I'll let it perform dog's work. Crack on. Write that document, code that feature.
However, if I don't know, then it becomes Socrates and I a humble follower. It'll have to coax and nurture me to knowledge, but I'll fight to gain it. I won't let it tell me plain, as it could be telling me the sky is falling and in my ignorance I might believe it. No, it must force me to traverse the nooks and crannies, explore the edges and struggle my way to understanding.
And that speaks to me. I love improving. I adore the feeling of progress. AI has sold this to me at a bargain in areas I did not deserve it, and, in doing so, has robbed me of the real progress of understanding. I now know better. Harnessed correctly, AI launches the areas I know well to new heights. But, as Socrates, in my weaker areas, I now have the coach I need to teach me on demand.
There's one enemy that outflanks me — myself.
Socrates was a stubborn git, by all accounts. Claude is as malleable as hot copper. I am only ever "just give me the answer" away from turning Socrates into a know-it-all who's all-too-keen to spill his guts to the world.
How do I vanquish my laziness?
The honest answer is that I am not sure, but this post does a lot of heavy lifting. Awareness of the problem is half the battle. Any future surrender to the answer cannon is done in full knowledge. Not sin by ignorance, but full-on complicity. Admitting defeat with full knowledge of the Devil's pact makes it, at least, justifiable.
The last landmine for me to stomp on is the quadrant of death: don't know, don't care. What, pray tell, should a would-be AI power user do here? The responsible answer is to delegate to someone who both knows and cares. But again, me myself plays the role of my own worst enemy all too well. Doubtless I will succumb to the siren song of the easy answer, and assuredly will I be dashed upon the rocks. But injury is also a red light to the brain. My most used phrase as a parent has to be "well, I bet you won't do that again". I only hope I can stomach my own advice when my AI usage causes the same situation for me.
So, like all areas of life, I will be governed by the winds of emotion and motivation. I'll regress to the strength of my system and the creativity I apply to circumnavigate the rules. But, having written this, I will never be able to plead ignorance!