The Quieter Question: How AI Is Changing Not What We Do, But How We Think

An essay argues that automation erodes expertise and conversational AI reshapes friendship and reason — the second-order effects that productivity metrics miss.

Beneath the launch announcements and benchmark wars runs a slower, harder question, raised in an essay highlighted by @firstthingsmag: how AI changes not only what we do, but how we think and relate to one another. The argument is that technology does not merely perform a task — it reshapes the person who relies on it.

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