In my last post, I wrote about using AI to help with writing screenplays, books and articles, and why it should support our ideas rather than replace them.

It’s early morning here in Atlanta and raining outside.  I’m having coffee, and I’ve been thinking about something that feels much larger than whether AI can write a decent article.

What happens to us when it begins doing too much of our thinking?

I use AI. I recently hired an AI artist to help create a scene for one of my film shorts, THE WOODHULL that would have cost thousands of dollars to build and shoot conventionally. I also use AI to research, challenge ideas, review agreements and disagreements to help me see possibilities I may have overlooked. It is an extraordinary tool.

But there is a difference between using a tool and surrendering a faculty.  As an intuitive thinker, I pay close attention to that line, as I’m sure many of you are.

Researchers are beginning to study what happens when people rely on AI to write and solve problems for them. One *MIT Media Lab study found that people writing without assistance showed stronger and more broadly connected brain activity than those using ChatGPT or Claude. The AI users also remembered less of what they had written and felt less ownership of it.

Other researchers have found that AI can improve an individual piece of writing while also making different writers sound more alike. And honestly, that concerns me.

Why would I want something I write in Atlanta to sound like a stranger’s blog post in Los Angeles?

Perhaps our brains do not literally shrink from relying on AI, but do the abilities we stop exercising, including intuitive brainstorming become weaker? Do we gradually lose patience with the uncomfortable stage of creativity, the wandering, questioning and staring out the window because the right thought has not arrived yet?  That’s part of the process and most of us, embrace this process!

And what happens to intuition?

Intuition is not magic appearing from nowhere. It is built from experience, perception, memory, emotion and all the subtle information we absorb before we can explain what we know. If a machine continually reaches the conclusion before we have wrestled with the question, are we still strengthening that inner intelligence?

I don’t believe the answer is to reject AI. That would be like refusing to use a camera because painters once feared photography.

The challenge we face, is to remain the originator.

Bring the observation, the strange idea, the emotional truth, the contradiction and the point of view. Let AI help research it, test it or polish it, but don’t hand it the keys to your mind and then congratulate it for knowing where you wanted to go.

AI should expand human intelligence, not quietly replace our willingness to use it.

Perhaps the most important skill of the future will not be knowing how to prompt a machine.  It will be knowing when to turn it off.

Time for another cup of coffee and then back to my own writing, with my brain, intuition and occasionally stubborn point of view fully engaged.

And if you’re looking for an intuitive perspective on a book manuscript, screenplay, article or creative project, schedule a consultation with me at VictoriaLynnWeston.com.

Research referenced: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task, a 2025 MIT Media Lab preprint by Nataliya Kosmyna and colleagues. The study involved 54 participants in its first three sessions and used EEG recordings to compare essay writing with ChatGPT, search engines and no external tools.