Opinion | Learning AI, unlearning AI

I spent two years learning about artificial intelligence-based tools. I read the papers, tested out the models, attended the workshops, built prompts, compared outputs, and watched each new release with the excitement of someone witnessing the future unfold in real time.

Like many people working close to technology, I believed AI would become the defining aspect for our generation. I realised how astonishing these systems had become.

What Happened

I also realised that the greatest threat AI posed was not to my career, but to my mind. This latter realisation came when I uninstalled ChatGPT from my phone.

• Maisha Islam MonameeThe author graduated from Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka.

• I would rather forget, search, revise, and begin again than slowly surrender the most human thing I possess: my ability to think.

• I now refuse to live that way; to become a second-hand thinker in my own life.

Key Details

I had spent years believing AI was merely another tool. But tools usually help us do things better.

• We have begun borrowing confidence from machines because we no longer believe our own imperfect thoughts are enough.

• Faced with an empty page, many people's first instinct is not to think but to ask a chatbot about what they ought to say.

• Perhaps the saddest consequence is that we no longer trust ourselves.

Why It Matters

Generative AI, on the other hand, offers to do the thinking before we have even attempted to do it ourselves. And most of us avoid admitting how dangerous this bargain is.

• After all, AI tools encourage us to surrender the very habits from which higher-order thinking emerges.

• But everywhere I look, the opposite is happening.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by The Kathmandu Post as more details emerge