Your Creativity Muscle: Use It or Lose It to AI
How to stay intellectually fit when artificial intelligence does the heavy lifting.
I’m normally all about helping you use AI more to improve your work and life. But what happens when you rely on it too much? Here's a crucial insight I've learned the hard way over the past months:
When you use AI a lot, you’ll come to rely on it. And the more intelligent the AI, the more dependent you become.
In a recent article I wrote for the Animalz blog, I shared my personal experience with this phenomenon:
“I’ve had several periods where I tried to let AI do my writing. To be fair, the writing of recent models like Anthropic’s Claude is impressive and will only improve. But my brain stopped working. My ideas became a trickle, I fell for hallucinations, and I started relying on AI for even the easiest of sentences.”
In Co-Intelligence, Professor
gives the example of a study with recruiters. Those given higher-quality AI perform worse than those using lower-quality AI: “When the AI is very good, humans have no reason to work hard and pay attention. They let the AI take over instead of using it as a tool.”I call this the “Google Mapification” of your mind:
“Like with a GPS, you start relying on it for directions all the time, even in places where you know the way. You end up taking routes you would know are wrong and, over time, completely lose your natural sense of direction because you don’t use that part of your brain — it's outsourced to the GPS.”
This temptation to use AI is especially strong at the start of a creative process when you face the so-called blank page. In my Animalz article titled Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page, I unpack why we fall for this trap and what we can do about it.
While the article focuses on writers and marketers, the problem — and solutions! — apply to any creative endeavor: design, product ideation, strategic planning, and more.
Here's a quick tip from the article: Always start with your input. Get something on the page before asking AI for help, even if it's just a vague idea or a rough sketch.
If you use AI regularly and want to stay creative, I highly recommend giving the full article a read:
After reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you experienced the AI Dependency Spiral? How do you balance AI assistance with maintaining your creativity? Reply to this email or leave a comment below!
Stay creative 😊
Tim