The prompt is the new pen, but who is the writer?

During a recent family visit to a theme park in Abu Dhabi, my nephews wanted to get something to eat. I handed 50 Dhs to the counter staff for the snacks priced at 25 Dhs. Surprisingly, she pulled out a calculator and calculated —twice—to confirm 50-25=25, before giving me the change. That moment triggered a flood of thoughts, calculators were invented for complex computations, yet over time, overdependence on them seems to have dropped confidence in even the simplest arithmetic. Have calculators, in a way, “dumbed down” humans?

Extending this analogy of Calculators to AI. Is “AI” further dumbing down Humans? The fear with AI is that it just doesn’t automate “Boring” parts – it also automates” Creative and Analytical” parts leaving humans as mere editors rather than creators. Have you come across instances of perfectly crafted emails – that lack the signature style of the writer? Colleagues sharing AI generated collated information without fact checking or validating, Stopped reading, deep thinking, brainstorming !!!   

I recently came across widely circulated social media videos showing professors from top universities expressing frustration over students using AI for their assignments. Below are some of their verbatim quotes.

I'm sick and tired of you guys using ChatGPT to respond... you're supposed to use your brains! How will you ever learn if you just use robots all the time?

Is AI leading us into “Natural Stupidity” by reshaping how humans think and learn?

  • Loss of First-Principles Thinking:
    When AI drafts emails or essays, we bypass the struggle of organizing ideas—the very process where true learning happens.
  • Speed over Thought:
    Instant responses powered by AI risk confusing productivity with intelligence. Silence, reflection, and deep thinking take time, yet they are being sidelined.
  • Creativity Reduced to Prompting:
    Tasks like writing, researching, summarizing, and brainstorming are increasingly outsourced. Many now feel uneasy doing them without AI, shifting creativity from genuine creation to mere prompting
    The euphoria of AI also had its downfall when the industry saw some “Very Costly mistakes” due to AI.
  • Air Canada: The Hallucinating Chatbot
    An Air Canada chatbot “hallucinated” (made up) a bereavement travel policy for a passenger, promising a discount that didn’t exist. When the passenger tried to claim the refund, Air Canada argued it wasn’t responsible for its chatbot’s mistakes. Read Article
  • Amazon: The Biased Recruiting Tool.
    Amazon developed an internal AI tool to review job applicants’ resumes. Because the AI was trained on resumes submitted over a 10-year period—mostly from men—the system taught itself to penalize resumes that included the word “women’s” or listed women’s colleges. Read Article
  • IBM Watson for Oncology: The Clinical failure
    IBM used  Watson (AI) to provide personalized cancer treatment recommendation. However, the system struggled to translate clinical “success” into real-world hospital settings. Medical professionals found that Watson often provided “unsafe and incorrect” treatment suggestions. Read Article

The debate is not on “whether” or “not” AI.  It is more about “Why and How”. AI is here to stay and will continue to be a part of our lives like the calculator. The question is about the over-dependency on AI, are we using it right? Are we sacrificing “Competence” over “Convenience”? Are we outsourcing our thinking – It can be the fastest way to lose it!


AI has quietly woven itself into our lives, often without us noticing or questioning it. However, the real takeover of AI over humans will happen when:

We stop validating, We stop asking why, and only accept what, We trust outputs more than lived experience

We stop owning outcomes, We treat AI as an authority, not a tool,

And finally, we stop learning because answers are always available!!!