Will AI and technology improve our skills or downgrade them?
Today, I read a study showing that social media use is linked to weaker reading, vocabulary, and word-recognition skills in teens under 16.
Yesterday, I read an article saying that students who used AI showed up to 55% less brain activity and remembered less.
According to the news, if this is what technology was supposed to help us with and make our lives easier, then I don’t see the future very brightly.
On the contrary, I have to say that I use AI for education (e.g. for building, explaining things when I do not understand them). But 80% of people just take the information and do not bother to think about other things.
Yes, we can save a lot of time, and mental capacity/energy with "no memorising" – but do we really spend that saved time on something useful and meaningful?
How do you see the role of AI and technology affecting our effort, using free time and learning (brain activity)?
Replies
I think my skills are already quietly degrading because of this. Not dramatically, but when you stop exercising a muscle regularly you lose it gradually. AI handles more of the thinking, I get the answer faster, but the mental work that used to build and maintain my knowledge is just happening less. Hard to see that as neutral in the long run.
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@sk_uxpin I also noticed that with AI, I am less patient IRL 🥲
@busmark_w_nika I can't really make the connection :D Can you please elaborate?
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@sk_uxpin AI shows me the result in 10 seconds. I am so used to receiving answers instantly, that anytime I am struggling with something for more than 5 minutes, I start being angry (because I want to have a quick process) :D
@sk_uxpin Intentional friction helps. Use AI to check your thinking, not replace it, form the answer yourself first, then compare. The people who'll compound the most from this era are the ones who stay in the loop rather than outsourcing the loop entirely. Staying curious and doing hard thinking daily, even when you don't have to, is probably the most underrated habit right now.
@faysal_fateh nothing to add, really
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@amm8 That part with vibecoding really hits close to home. I am not good at it, but at least I am trying to code, to explain the code, so I can know what is what, where to search for it etc. I can at least improve myself each day.
You are not wrong to worry.
I see it around me too, people remembering less, reading less, thinking in shortcuts.
AI can genuinely help if you're already curious, but for most folks it just becomes a way to skip the hard part. And the hard part is usually where the actual learning happens.
And Last if you use AI for good direction and for good suggestion then its result will be good. otherwise all AI users can be lost his energy of thinking or less as per today's capacity
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@verticomply + social media is hell, or divided attention span too. Now, I am on a work call and writing this comment at the same time (with my webcam turned on) :D
I think the real issue isn't the tool, it's the posture. AI used as a thinking partner builds capability. AI used as an answer machine quietly erodes it. The 80/20 split you're describing isn't a technology problem, it's a habit problem. The question is whether we're designing tools that encourage the first behavior or just optimizing for the second.
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@faysal_fateh IMO, most of us are comfortable and rely too much on it :)
@busmark_w_nika yes too much reliance is not good
Headliner
I think it really depends on the person and where there are in their skill development. For example, I fully believe someone should truly learn their niche on their own 'the traditional way.' Aka, going to school, getting real world experience, and/or good old fashion trial and error.
AI can certainly help teach skills faster, but I do think the person needs to be generally aware of what they are using AI for/knowledgable about the task at hand before using it. AI should always be checked by a person as it is easily manipulated and can hallucinate.
AI, when used correctly, can also help sharpen those skills. For example, I know how to write an intentional blog that is optimized for SEO. Has AI helped me improve my writing and helped further post rankings? Absolutely, but I had the base skill to start. I understood the clear end goal and was able to use AI in tangent with a skill I possessed to further it faster.
To me, AI is just like a teammate!
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@elissa_craig I think that most of the training (skills) of AI will be done by senior people, and the next generation will be less motivated to fact-check. But hopefully, we will be motivated to learn something new IRL.
I think AI downgrades skills when it removes friction too early. The part people miss is that struggle is not always waste. Sometimes the effort of reading, searching, rewriting, or debugging is where the skill forms.
But I don’t think the answer is using less AI. I think it is using AI later in the process, after you have formed your own first version. For me, the healthiest pattern is: think first, use AI to challenge or extend, then decide yourself.
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@vijay_navaluri but you know, when something can be accomplished quickly, why should we wait? And this is a huge problem, because we are less patient with learning.
The 80% you mentioned aren't a new problem. They used to copy from textbooks without thinking either. AI just made the laziness faster and more visible.
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@ishtiaqbuilds two opposites – progress is faster, but also downgrade is faster :)
honestly the framing's a bit binary. it's less about AI improving or downgrading skills, more that the skills themselves are splitting.
execution (syntax, boilerplate, first drafts) is getting commoditized fast. judgment (what to build, catching when output's subtly wrong, asking the right question) is getting more valuable, because bad judgment scales faster too.
i run a bunch of coding agents in parallel on my product. work shifted from writing to reviewing and specifying. the people struggling most aren't the heavy users, they're the ones who never built judgment in the first place and now don't have to, until something breaks quietly...
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@saad_el_gueddari but when you do not practice repeating of your skill – aren't you forgetting it?
@busmark_w_nika i think we're heading into "ai does boring, humans do interesting", just gotta be careful what u call boring.
when i built yvori i would've hated doing the frontend by hand, all the tailwind fiddling, layout tweaks, animation timing, ai's genuinely better at that grind. but i'd never let it design the backend. data model, auth flow, payments, that's where one wrong call costs u weeks and i need to actually understand what's happening underneath.
so it's not a universal split, more like what's the cost of getting it wrong. low cost stuff offload freely. high cost stuff u keep doing urself even when ai could technically do it. people get burned when they offload the high cost stuff coz it feels boring to them.
I think the key difference is whether technology replaces thinking or supports thinking.
AI can be an amazing tutor when it helps you understand, question, build, and explore. But when people use it to skip the thinking process, the learning becomes shallow very quickly. The same applies to social media: the problem is not only the tool, but the habit it creates around attention.
For me, the best use of AI is: first think, then ask, then challenge the answer. If AI becomes a shortcut instead of a sparring partner, we save time but lose depth.
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@alpertayfurr I think this is true, but the thing is that AI is more likely to say you the answer, so you are not motivated to think about it too much :D
Flavored Resume
I think its degrading them. Not just skills we're bad at and use AI to do for us (like generating images for non-designers) but also the areas people are generally good at. Primarily because it's a lot quicker and easier to use AI than do it ourselves.
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@edward_g yes, that's actually what I meant (not talking about things we are not good at at all) :DD