Are we artificially dulling our minds, creativity, and intelligence?!
Today I am exploring a topic that is tenuously linked with the intended purpose of Mum Comms. Tenuous in that there is a link to wider parenting concerns, particularly regarding the implementation of rapidly emerging and evolving technology, one whose longer-term impact and potentially broad use within the lives of our young children is unknown territory…but…I will be honest, as worrying as this is for our future society, it was not the primary reason that artificial intelligence led me back to my Mum Comms musings…
It would be fair to note that Mum Comms has been quiescent in recent years. My beloved blog has laid dormant due to a diversion of my focus toward authoring a non-fiction pseudonymised book, lovingly and emotionally recounting our experiences of parenting two children with very differing needs, including navigating paths unknown within the world of autism.
There is no denying this was a mammoth task, as the cathartic chapters that now fill my treasured book presented themselves faster than I could type. The challenges, now carefully processed and indexed, just kept coming, like page turners in a book that you cannot put down. The process was at times a pleasure but predominantly an outlet – a chance to grasp hold of my mind once again, something I had desperately longed for, and quite frankly required!
I have previously alluded to a sense of ‘losing my identity’, both in my blog ‘Costume Changes’ and in my book, as motherhood took over and my working mind temporarily took a backseat. In reality though, my mind occasionally did not even make it into the vehicle, never mind the backseat! The change in my prioritised responsibility ended up masking something deeper – sleepless nights and the overwhelm of a thousand worries became the excuses that prevented me from acknowledging the ever-increasing sluggishness of my mind.
You might say that writing has saved me during recent years. Becoming therapy in more ways than one! Offering an opportunity to process, learn and care for myself, whilst also being a way to stimulate my mind, to reignite my spark and fire off some rather dampened synapses, along the way. Many of you might recognise these feelings from similar periods within your own lives, or even be in the thick of the motions right now – excusing faltering behaviours and lapses in your usually well organised mind as baby brain or parenting fog, even upon return to employment – an excuse I never tired of but wish I had noted as an early warning flag…
Post book publication and with the passing years, internal self-gaslighting, doubting my own memory and confidence, became a theme within both my waking and sleeping thoughts. Easily excused this time by working reduced hours – questioning if I was challenged my mind enough, or if had I never truly rid myself of baby brain, or was it situational – was the additional strain of being a special needs parent leaving no more room within my mental capacity?
A year or two later, after lots of back and forth with healthcare professionals and self-questioning, I can now confirm the strange phenomenon, gradually consuming the version of myself that I once knew, was perimenopause – a sly, rarely discussed, culprit of what I thought was lingering baby brain. Perimenopause, or teenager brain as I think it should be renamed (honestly, I really should have planned better than hitting this stage of life just as our children became teens – if you know, you know) took me by complete surprise. The fog was literally clouding my brain, to the extent that I could not navigate my thoughts or recognise the woman I was becoming.
I cannot begin to tell you the relief I felt when I was finally able to comprehend the cause of this frustrating and worrying inability to grasp appropriate words or string together cohesive sentences – a daily occurrence that typically happened when it mattered most and ultimately resulted in the further demise of my already fairly depleted self-esteem.
I harp back to this not with the intention of dwelling on the delights of the female reproductive life cycle (we do that enough on a daily basis amongst our fellow cheerleaders) but because it is pertinent to the origin of the aptly named title of this blog and the question initially posed – are we artificially dulling our minds, creativity, and intelligence?! Bear with me now as I try to explain…
One teenager, one inbetweener and plentiful replacement hormones later (thankyou modern medicine) I was finally beginning to feel like ‘me’ again. I felt ‘on fire’ for the first time in many years, not literally of course, but those synapses were busy connecting within my grey matter once again. I had a grasp on life, having meaningful, well-constructed conversations, making a difference to the lives of others by fully utilising my brain once more – gradually restoring the faith in myself that I was beginning to lose. That was until one day when a familiar haze returned to my horizon…
…Everything had been ‘hunky dory’ as they say for many months, so I questioned how this could possibly be. My hormone levels were stable, and I was not under any unusual stress, still I could not shake the clouds that were, yet again, shrouding my view. Until, in the darkest hours of the night, as is usually the case for any epiphany, at least in my case, it dawned on me…might I be experiencing something entirely new to us as human beings…a dulling of my mind, arrested ingenuity, thanks to an overdependence on artificial intelligence?!…
Within my line of work, as within many lines of work now, we are becoming increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence, or AI, as we, less than affectionately, know it. (I am hazarding a guess that unless you have been dwelling in a cave or uninhabited land, you are familiar with this two-letter acronym). Laborious tasks replaced and, sadly, efficiency rendering creativity redundant – those like me, who lovingly pour over their craft are finding themselves without purpose and worse still, allowing productivity to bypass the needs of our precious minds.
I would liken the discovery of artificial intelligence applications, of which there are a few, to the loss of free thinking – not only the desire to free think but the need to free think. Why would we, when we are only ever a finger tap away from an easier, more time efficient life?! Why cook when you can take away?! Why do mental arithmetic when you can use a calculator?!
Anything from the recognisable party invites (that both my children recently balked at for their artificial genericism) to extremely challenging, heavily responsible work tasks – all can be produced within less than the blink of an eye and I understand it – life is busy and becoming busier by the day (likely thanks to the pressures of societal expectation – another blog for another time). Why would we not maximise output wherever possible? Has anyone ever questioned the impact of this though? The impact on us as human beings – naturally (in most cases) empathetic, social, inquisitive, intelligent human beings…the impact on our minds – imaginative, explorative, inventive minds…
Well, it turns out that I am not alone in my pondering…
Before I continue, do not fear, I am under no illusion that a change of my attire back to a dusty old lab coat, sifting through and summarising clinical trials, would result in unpopular subject matter for my frequent readers, so whilst I am going to delve a little deeper into the question I have posed and discuss my findings, I will steer clear of hypotheses and p-values for you all!
It actually only took a matter of minutes, well perhaps a few, owing to the fact that I intentionally avoided the AI summaries, opting for the now semi-old-school-tactic of reading search engine results myself, to discover this newfound reliance on AI actually has a name…cognitive outsourcing!
Cognitive outsourcing, often interchangeable with cognitive offloading, does not exactly roll off the tongue (or easily come to the minds of those of us in the midst of the fog) and can therefore more easily be described as ‘giving someone else, or in this case AI, the hard work to do’ and low and behold, at least as far as the existing plethora of current evidence suggests, this act of ‘offloading the hard work’ does actually lend itself to cognitive decline – supporting the very hypothesis, apologies, concern, that I initially raised!
…Those poor synapses that I have been so keen to avoid neglecting really are at risk of miss firing, or worse still, not sparking at all!…
I wish this were not the case, because artificial intelligence, in its many forms, has great potential to support our world and the people within it, especially in relation to medical advances, from oncology to, ever so slightly ironically, neurological health, and beyond. (For the time being I will brush over the terrifying headline grabbers suggesting that AI will soon destroy mankind). There is also no denying that AI at a more basic level, within the home for example, is a great crutch to lean on too, often doing a better job than we ever could and certainly much faster.
As I have previously eluded to though, AI has the potential to make us redundant – in both the emotional and physical sense. Numerous professions are now being partially or completely replaced by this technology; mine included to a certain extent. Recently, naïve, and with nothing but good intentions, I asked AI for suggested improvements to a project proposal that I had spent many hours creating and was consequently extremely proud of, only to predictably, and with one simple click, have my efforts deconstructed, re-written, and accompanied by the standard foot note of hollow compliments and further bruised self-worth. All in a matter of seconds.
This negative impact is not unique to me alone. Whilst I cannot solely blame AI usage for my personal experience of imposter syndrome and self-devaluation, there is certainly a correlation and a recent article noted that ‘…“cognitive outsourcing,” not only hampers intellectual growth but also diminishes confidence in one’s own abilities over time.’(1) A feeling that I have most certainly battled with myself in recent months and years, and one that continues to prove very damaging to my overall mental wellbeing.
Coming back to the question at hand…are we artificially dulling our minds, creativity, and intelligence?! Is modern AI arrested ingenuity, under a guise? Are we dumbing our minds to the detriment of our health?…
Once upon a time we might have reminisced the days of toddling down to our local library and painstakingly thumbing through endless books to research our homework (how I loved doing this with my older sibling). I fear we will soon be reminiscing the days of scrolling through endless search engine pages too in favour of more time efficient AI summaries!
We know all too well that we should exercise our bodies and the risks associated with not doing so. We have also been told, for many generations now, that we must exercise our brains to avoid age related cognitive decline and many would argue this is more applicable now than ever in the modern world that we find ourselves in.
So, I guess the simple answer to my original question is yes…the mechanisms behind this answer though are a little more complicated and most definitely not for this blog!
…
I have dearly missed my sense of creativity and purpose in recent months, however what I have missed the most is myself! In this respect, I feel fortunate that my intuition has led me to this realisation, so I can heed the warnings and actively take back control sooner rather than later…
Unlike many, I do not have the luxury of an irreplaceable skill or manual trade to rely on, my life path never guided me in that direction. No matter how much I have tried, I cannot create a beautiful hairstyle or build elaborate wooden structures (and I really have tried on both accounts). What I can do though is ensure I never let anything, or anyone, replace my unique mind. There is no other brain, artificial or otherwise, in this world quite like my own and I vow to fuel its creativity, to fuel its spark, and in turn, fuel my purpose – if not for the greater good or for human connectivity, but for me, myself and (not A)I.
I encourage each and every one of you to do the same.
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Acknowledgements (just because this made me chuckle when reviewing an article):
I, the author, affirm that all ideas and content presented in this blog are my own, subject to included references.
Artificial Intelligence was NOT utilised to assist with language refinement or structural clarity.
All content was reviewed, edited, and approved by the author (me, myself, and (not A)I).
References:
1: Hasan M. K. (2025). How AI quietly undermines the joy and effort of learning: a call for rebalancing education in the digital age. Annals of medicine and surgery, 87(8), 4693–4694. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12333830/
Mum Comms 