I know this is currently an unpopular opinion, but it is one that is gaining traction.
A.I. needs to be turned off. Unplugged. Put on the back shelf and forgotten about. Least of all because people have stopped using dots between the initials and sans-serif fonts make great yet confusing headlines that don my name. All naming frustrations aside, this opinion stems from a number of concerns I have about it. I can narrow it down to one question.
What good is it, actually?
We don’t need it. It doesn’t do anything we (humans) can’t already do. It doesn’t actually save that much time, and yet uses up more resource than it’s worth. It is destroying human creativity, restricting human learning and isn’t progressing us as a race, instead it’s making us lazier, and certain skills such as critical thought will begin to diminish to extinction.
Turn it off.
And this is coming from someone who generally picks up on new tech and embraces it. And don’t get me wrong; I’ve spent a fair bit of time getting to know different A.I. models. I’ve used it to write music. I’ve used it to modify and create images. In particular, I’ve used it to code entire apps from scratch, as well as troubleshoot code errors in website I was building.
But all of these things meant that I lost out to A.I.
I rarely learned anything – I now have no idea how the app was made, or how to fix it, so I’m now reliant upon A.I. to adjust or modify or improve on the app. I couldn’t tell you how to write one for yourself, and the next time I need an app made, I can’t code it myself – I’m wholly reliant on A.I. to build it.
But what does that actually look like? Well, it’s me typing in a prompt of what I want, and then copying code from A.I. into my code editor, uploading it to the web server, and then testing to see that the code works.
Undoubtedly, it rarely works on the first iteration. So I go back to A.I. and describe the problem or whatever it didn’t get right – be it design or functionality. A.I. then spits out a ‘fix’ and I copy and paste that into the right place. Refresh the page. No changes. Still the same problem. Back to A.I. Describe the issue, saying there was no change. A.I. considers more code and sends it to you. Copy. Paste. Refresh. Improvement, not perfect, and has made a new issue. Back to A.I…
And by the end of this, we might be clocking up three if not four hours, just to get one part done. Countless evenings.
Now… Did it get done? Yes.
Was it actually quicker? I’m not sure that it was. Part of me thinks yes, because I didn’t have to learn the code language or build the entire thing. But on the other hand, identifying issues and knowing how to fix them without having to write prompts, copy and paste would be a lot quicker if I had some ability to code it myself.
I didn’t get better at anything.
For image creation, everyone thinks they’re super clever being able to make their own illustrations, cartoons, or realistic ‘photo’ using A.I.
You know what is clever though? Doing it yourself. Creating it yourself. Drawing it yourself.
“But I’m no good at art? So A.I. makes it easy for me to make a drawing without having to do it myself.”
Yes – that might be the case. But you don’t have to do everything yourself. Illustrators around the world are going out of a job. Connections between people and their artistic friends are getting severed.
So maybe it saves time. It saves on knowledge acquisition and retention.
But at what cost?
Resources: We’ve been told fairly early on that keeping these A.I. models running in the data centres are hugely taxing on local resources, like water with which they need to cool the servers, such is the load and processing power required.
Thinking: Critical thinking is on the decline. It already was, when you can search for anything; but now A.I. will actively give you what you are looking for in regards to anything. But it does not discern the information. It doesn’t do the thinking for you. It doesn’t let you process the information or data yourself; your brain is getting piggy-backed everywhere, instead of getting stronger by walking the whole way, whether it’s a steep incline it’s going up, or winding its way between trees in the forest.
Creativity: There is a human instinct to create. To make. To build. To imagine. Employing A.I. to do those detracts from a very visceral and instinctual human experience.
Ronny Chieng gave a graduation speech in May 2026 in which he encouraged the next generation to destroy A.I. He made some very poignant points, which are worth repeating and reinforcing on a daily basis as A.I. becomes more and more widespread.
“…I know there’s someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, “Well, you know, what about the use of A-I to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?” Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I’m not talking about that. Obviously, if you’re using it for that purpose, you’re not the problem, okay?
I’m talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025 in Archives.”
This is the experience I had with the coding of the apps I’ve been working on. This is the concern I have about critical thinking.
He continued:
“This is why you guys shouldn’t be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, “Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?” Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me?”
“Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos…
But what they’re missing is this. The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”
Google Search is now laced with Gemini, Google’s AI. Search and it now goes and synthesises all the relevant material and spits out a summary of what it found, regardless of how legit that may or may not have been. No longer are you, the human, being asked to discern the information and where you got it from. You just read what Google found first.
It will simply lead to further laziness – something that already plagues us as a society. If you rely on A.I. to do basic tasks that you as a human can do, then eventually, you will lose the ability to do that task. It might not be immediate. But over the course of generations, there are skills that diminish and eventually disappear completely. Often this can be due to technology advancements. Take reading an analogue clock. Since the digital LCD screen has taken over watch faces, the younger generations have real difficulty reading analogue clocks. Other times it’s due to complete human laziness. Take mending clothes with patches, or sewing fixes, or even darning socks. These would have been key skills of most people in the past. Now, we simply discard and purchase new replacements.
In some sense, I liken it to Social Media. At the launch of Facebook, it was snapped up and bought into by the wider public. A great way to stay in touch with people. A great way to share what you were up to. A great way to share ideas.
But as we have become more aware, and as time has gone on, we’ve begun to see that for all the good things it has brought us, there have been detrimental side affects, so the point where some countries are banning it for their younger generations. It’s taken the better part of a decade for us to realise that maybe social media isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The warning signs are already there for A.I. It will begin to dominate the majority of spaces in our lives if we let it. Some will say it’s simply unavoidable.
I just wish sometimes that we – the public – humanity – would stop listening to the lies being fed to us by those who stand to make the most money from it, and start thinking for ourselves.
And let’s not forget what A.I. stands for.
- Artificial: Fake, made up, faux, not real, made up.
- Intelligence: knowledge, understanding, wisdom.
Why are we so enamoured at something that can fake intelligence that also actively jeopardises the development of our intelligence at the same time?
Stand for humanity. Retain your ability to think critically and creatively. Don’t get robbed of the fun or satisfaction you can have of doing something for yourself or see your cognitive ability wane and diminish because you’ve relied on some computer making predictions of what you want to see for too long. Don’t let it steal life away from you.