There’s an interesting dynamic in AI arguments online, where those who are Anti-AI say that using it reduces your ability to think, while those who are Pro-AI say that it gets rid of the busywork and leaves them more time to think. While this trend isn’t universal — many people still staunchly oppose AI for other reasons, and many techbros are certainly not using AI to think — it points to an interesting conclusion: many people still don’t understand the value of AI.

As you could guess from the title, my answer is in the Pro-AI camp. I would consider myself more of an “AI realist” — I certainly believe the financial engineering of AI companies will cause ruin to the economy, and am mostly against generative AI measures for creative tasks — but I do think it is possible to think and use AI at the same time. I think the key difference is this:

There is tactical thinking, and there is strategic thinking.

Let’s say you were building an app. A tactical consideration would be something like how to name a variable, or how to write a function. A strategic consideration would be how you design the system to scale easily, make sure certain security considerations are available, and how you price the app for the market.

The true goal of AI is to enable more strategic thinking by doing the tactical thinking for you. The reason you falter when using AI is because you either get too picky/in-the-weeds about tactical decisions (reasonable for mission critical content, but you shouldn’t be using AI for that — and 99% of tactical work isn’t mission critical) or you let AI do the strategic thinking for you as well (models aren’t good at this, especially since strategic considerations require way more information than any context can handle).

If you’re using AI correctly, you’ll be thinking more, not less.