How to Stop Relying on AI
Recent studies have shown that reliance on AI causes brain atrophy, and that students who use AI are found to have fallen behind their peers when they no longer have AI available to use, demonstrating that AI use does not teach the skill it is helping you with.
Not to mention the negative environmental and cultural impacts.
But if you’re someone who has become used to and believes you require AI to succeed, I know it isn’t easy to give up the thing that makes your life easier, no matter how much harm it causes. So here’s a little guide on how to move away from AI, and rebuild your brain.
The very first thing I want you to internalize is this:
You are incredibly capable of doing the thing without AI.
The evilly brilliant thing about AI is that it convinces people that we can’t do things, or that we’ll do them poorly, without the help of AI. Stuff like writing an essay, or a story, or a love letter, or drawing a picture, or making music, or coming up with ideas and plans, or researching and gathering information. What all these things have in common is that humans have been doing some them for millennia, and others, for the span of human existence itself.
We have never needed anything more than our own minds and willingness to learn to be able to do the things that generative AI “helps” us with.
But when you become convinced that you can’t do these things, then you stop trying, you stop learning how to do them, and eventually, you start losing your skill in this area.
There was no problem for AI to solve, so it sold itself to you to create a problem, and then solidified itself in your life as the answer.
The best way to break from this cycle, is to take the plunge and be willing to be bad at something for a little while. Because while you might not be very good at writing essays, the more you force yourself to do them, the better at them you get, until one day, you actually are quite good at writing essays. With AI, you can only get worse at them.
2. Even if it’s bad, your work has worth because you made it
I had someone once tell me (we’ll call them Joe) that they needed AI because their original work sounded so horrible without it that they couldn’t even stand to read it. This is a perfect example of my point above—that AI convinces us we need it, or are incapable of doing the thing without it, but I digress.
What I found sad about this wasn’t that the person was using AI, but rather that it had caused them to begin to see their own work as worthless, when it was actually the exact opposite.
Your work, your ideas, your effort, your thoughts, your experiences, your practice, your hands and your voice and your mind—that’s what gives everything you do value. Because it’s yours, it could only come from you. And as artists, this is all we have. Anyone can learn to write well, anyone can learn to draw well, anyone can put in the amount of hours we have put in practicing and learning—but our ideas, our humanity that we imbue into the work—that’s where all the magic and beauty comes from.
So I would argue the exact opposite. Work generated by AI is the only art in the world that is absolutely worthless. Passably good (in some cases), but utterly worthless.
3. Being bad at things is uncomfy—it’s okay to be uncomfy
Going back to Joe, who couldn’t write without AI for fear of it being horrible… While yes, AI taught them that their work was worse than I’m sure it actually was, my second piece of advice to them was to learn how to sit in that discomfort.
I did not learn how to write by avoiding reading back on my writing that I found cringy. I too went through many periods of self doubt, of hating my own stuff, of being too afraid to share it, of sometimes wanting to set it ablaze and never come back. Struggling and discomfort is part of learning and practicing and getting better at something.
When we are able to be self-critical of our work, we are also able to grow and improve it. I think that Joe learned to be overly critical of their work, but that too is an experience to grow and learn from.
If your original work makes you uncomfy, you may just need to learn how to sit in that, because overcoming that feeling time and time again is (imo) an essential piece to being an artist.
4. Practice Practice Practice
If you have relied on AI for a long time, you may find after quitting it, that you are behind others your age/grade/experience level who weren’t using AI. And that sucks, I get it, but remember that going back to AI leaves you in an even worse place as they continue to improve while you continue to stagnate or even get worse.
To catch up to others and reclaim that lost experience, it all just takes practice.
Write essays outside of school on stupid topics that make you laugh. Write short stories in the margins of your textbooks. Sit down with your music program for ten minutes every night. Draw a 4x4 sketch of your breakfast every morning. Do the thing that you want to improve at for any amount consistently.
If you practice enough, you can and will catch up. Remember lesson #1, you can do these things. You can get better at them. With enough effort and practice, you can do anything.
I remember this girl in highschool who really struggled with math, she was barely passing the lowest level in our grade, but she really wanted to become a nurse. She was told by all of our student support staff to choose something else, that she didn’t have the grades, that it was impossible for her to make it to the level of math she needed for her nursing program.
I’ve never met a more determined person in my life—she practiced overtime, did classes in the summer, climbed the levels, and yes, despite what everyone said, she got into her nursing program at the end of high school. And I’m sure she had to work her ass off once she was there too, but knowing her, I’m also sure that she made it through.
It’s a classic story I’m sure you’ve heard versions of before, but I think it really helps make the point: you can do it, if you want to, and if you try.
