Am I too old school for AI?

I grew up in the time before the internet*. When I was at school there was no Google, no one had a laptop and the phone was attached to the wall at home. 

Fast forward to 2025 and the world is vastly different. In many, many good ways. Now life is all about immediate access to, well, everything.  

Need a ride? Sure, call an uber and wait max 5 minutes.  

Need groceries? Sure, we can deliver them to your door.  

Need some entertainment? Stream any content, anywhere you are. 

Need a business plan to present to the bank to get a loan? Sure, use Co-Pilot. 

And this is the uncomfortable bit. In 30 seconds you’ll have it. An entire business plan. Something that used to take people a lot of time to work on and figure out. Instantly. Wait, what?   

Now call me old school if you will. But there’s something about using AI that in many ways feels a bit like cheating in these kinds of scenarios. Because if it can do all this thinking work, do I need to think? And if the answer is no, then what am I meant to be doing with my time? 

I’m not alone. 

Research conducted by MIT showed a decline in “critical thinking and effort” in regular users of ChatGPT. The study found that over several months they became more and more passive often resorting to simply copying and pasting.  

(For the record I used Co-Pilot to find this info for me and then I rewrote these findings in the above sentences. Interestingly the prompt I received next was, “Would you like help exploring how to use AI tools like ChatGPT in ways that enhance rather than hinder cognitive development?” So.) 

Having said this AI can definitely make things easier. Especially for those boring tasks. Like reading many, many pages of research and extracting the good bits. Summarising meeting notes. Rewriting the passive aggressively toned email that you wanted to send to make it less so. 

But where do you draw the line? 

Just today I was reading cover letters from applicants for a role we’ve advertised and I noticed a trend. They all sounded the same. They all referenced the same things. They all felt a bit copy paste (see also above).  

And this is my worry. 

Use it where it makes sense for you and to help you with the things that would take you an appreciable amount of time or that you don’t like doing.  

And perhaps ask it to refine your work. But asking AI to do all your work? That’s the conundrum for me. 

I also grew up in that era where all the futuristic movies were about how one day AI would take over and humankind would be destroyed. Think The Matrix, Terminator and Blade Runner. It’s no wonder I’m slightly scared. 

However I know full well that AI is here to stay and that I need to embrace it. As proof of me getting on board I ran the above through Co-Pilot and here’s what it said: 

“Thanks for sharing your blog post, Jennifer! It’s engaging, relatable, and has a lovely conversational tone that makes it easy to read. You’ve struck a great balance between nostalgia and curiosity about the future.” 

Then it gave me some suggestions to make mine better. Some were great and I wanted to implement them but after I asked it to rewrite the full piece incorporating the suggestions, it wrote this: 

“Hmm...it looks like I can't chat about this. Let's try a different topic.” 

I really hope this doesn’t mean I’m on the watchlist now. 

*Disclaimer. The internet was invented when I was a teen but it only became mainstream when I was at university. We used encyclopaedias and reference books at the library to do our research. Yes, yes I know…