A kid is sitting in their math class, struggling, but getting through their homework. They look over and see the student next to them with their Chromebook open. The student sees them putting problems into an AI bot trying to get answers, “I don’t understand any of this,” the student hears them say. They start to feel irritated, and think to themself, “maybe because you’re not putting in any effort.”

AI kills creativity and people should stop relying on it as a primary source.

The use of AI has skyrocketed, and it has made major improvements throughout these past few years. According to Harvard Business Review, three out of four young adults have talked to an AI bot in the past month. It has grown smarter and is able to generate much more than before, but because of this, people have started to rely on it too much. AI is starting to be used as a main tool among teens and younger adults.

AI went from something small to something big within a very short timespan. Because it has grown so much, people have started using it more and more, and stopped thinking for themselves. People will go to AI for questions rather than asking a teacher or friend, leading to them relying on AI for a majority of things that they don’t understand.

According to Time Magazine, in a study that compares the writing quality of AI users and non AI users. “Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.”

AI is helpful, but it isn’t always reliable. It can mix things up and feed wrong information.

AI has also started to become a tool to show creativity and ideas, but rather than putting the work into those ideas, it gives quick and easy results. It may sound useful, but it kills all the original creativity in it and takes away the effort that could be spent showing real, raw expression.

Even larger companies have started using AI for commercials and advertisements. Instead of finding people to fill in these parts, they generate their ideas using AI. According to BCG, 53% of organizations are allocating their funds to make sure they have a budget for AI in marketing. These positions could be filled by people with experience in this area.

Along with this, the constant use of AI keeps brain activity at a low. This can cause brain fog and makes the brain lack critical thinking skills. When the brain isn’t active and isn’t used to a certain capacity, it can cause more issues in the future.

According to UNSW, “people who have been more mentally active over their lives have a larger hippocampus – which relates to memory – and … it shrinks at half the rate of those who have lower mental activity.”

Because AI is inescapable, people are turning to it any time they need a creative idea. This is doing more damage to the human brain as time goes on. People are losing their creativity and critical thinking skills the more they rely on AI.

AI is incapable of feeling human emotion, which means it shouldn’t be a tool for mental health. If someone is struggling mentally, there are many sources to go to such as the suicide and mental health hotline 988, local mental health centers or even friends, family, teachers, etc. Some people go to AI, which is an easy source, but getting advice and help from someone who has experience or knowledge in that field will be much more reliable.

While AI has many drawbacks, it is still useful. AI is very useful when it comes to quick and straight to the point tasks. It is good at explaining things on a deeper level and has much more specific answers. Though with all that said, it doesn’t come up with all of these ideas on its own. AI uses things that are already published and puts them together to come up with answers. It finds the most common thing said about the topic and puts that out.

There are always other resources available that are not AI. Looking at articles and polls can give better information, having all the information is better than an overview of things.

AI has grown at a rapid pace and has gotten very smart, but that doesn’t mean that people should rely on it.