This Post Is Not Authentic

AI is making us dumber. It’s stealing from artists. It’s destroying creativity. It’s ruining everything.

At least, that’s what I keep hearing.

Scroll through Instagram, talk to the right people at the right coffee shop, and the refrain is always the same—some variation of: AI is scary and bad, and you should feel bad for even considering using it. There’s rarely much depth beyond that. No real engagement. Just vibes-based opposition, as if rejecting AI is an ethical stance in and of itself.

And yet, I’m sitting here wondering why my actual experience using AI feels like the opposite of all these dire warnings.

I don’t feel dumber. I don’t feel less creative. If anything, I feel more engaged, more productive, and more connected to my own ideas than I have in years.

That wasn’t the expectation.

How AI Unlocked a Stuck Part of My Brain

I wasn’t always interested in this. I dabbled with earlier versions of ChatGPT and didn’t think much of it. Seemed like a fun novelty, but nothing that could actually impact my work.

Then, one day, I had the idea to ChatGPT myself—to ask AI to tell me who I was. The response floored me.

It was better than any bio I’d written about myself. Better than anything anyone else had written about me. It articulated who I was and what I was doing more clearly than I ever had. That was the moment I got curious.

Since then, I’ve been using AI in ways that have accelerated my ability to get things done—helping me refine my ideas, structure my writing, and push through all the small friction points that used to slow me down. I used to spend hours agonizing over writing—not because I didn’t have ideas, but because I got stuck in my own head. What if I wasn’t structuring things right? What if my tone was off? What if I couldn’t quite get my thoughts to land the way I wanted?

AI removed that hesitation. It unlocked a part of my brain that had been stuck, freeing me to move forward rather than spiral in uncertainty. Instead of feeling drained and exhausted from research and writing, I found myself feeling energized and excited.

I wasn’t expecting that.

AI Is Not Making Me Stupid. It’s Making Me Move.

So when I see these articles claiming AI is reducing critical thinking, I have to wonder—what are these researchers actually measuring?

Because in my experience, AI hasn’t made me lazy, complacent, or intellectually dull. It’s made me sharper, more efficient, and more willing to act.

I already had the ideas. AI just helped me articulate them faster—removing roadblocks, not replacing effort. But that’s not what people want to hear, is it? Because this isn’t really a debate about intelligence or creativity. It’s about authenticity.

Authenticity Is a Trap

People hate AI because they think it’s inauthentic. As if authenticity is some kind of sacred, unshakable virtue. As if being “real” is inherently more valuable than being effective.

I’ve spent years thinking about ideas, researching, writing things down, refining my thoughts. But I’d always get stuck. I’d procrastinate. I’d second-guess. I’d feel like I had to get everything just right before putting it out into the world.

I’ve probably had dozens of projects that never went anywhere because I got bogged down in the details—details that, in the end, don’t actually matter nearly as much as simply moving forward. That’s what AI changed for me. It let me move.

I still have to think. I still have to decide what I actually believe. I still have to shape my own ideas. AI didn’t replace my brain—it just cut out all the noise that was keeping me from using it.

And the ironic thing? This newfound efficiency, this ability to act quickly and decisively, has actually led me to deeper real-world connections than I’ve had in years. Conversations, partnerships, things that might have taken months or years to get moving have happened in weeks. Not because AI did the work for me, but because it removed the hesitation that kept me from doing the work myself.

I Didn’t Write This.

Not one word.

Instead, I spent my Saturday morning having a conversation with my computer—just talking, in plain English, no typing, no drafting, no staring at a blank screen trying to find the right words.

I let my thoughts flow, almost stream-of-consciousness, the way I would if I were talking to a friend. No overthinking, no second-guessing, no getting caught up in the mechanics of writing.

And now, here it is. Organized, structured, clear. My ideas, but without the usual grind of trying to force them into sentences, without the slow, painstaking process of typing and editing and rewriting until I burn out.

It’s a completely different way of thinking. A completely different way of getting ideas out of my head and into the world.

And it makes me wonder—if this process feels so natural, if it helps me think better, if it lets me express myself more freely than I ever have before… does it matter that I didn’t “write” it?

Or is this writing?