Many of us have probably read Anthropic’s recent piece, “When AI Builds Itself.” At this leading AI company, more than 80% of the code is now written by AI itself—and even the reviewing is handled by AI. The article goes further, suggesting that the only competitive edge humans have left is “taste” and “judgment.”
As I read it, one question kept nagging at me: if judgment is humanity’s last moat, where does it actually come from?
A seasoned engineer can spot a flaw in a second because he has personally written tens of thousands of lines of code, building intuition through countless rounds of correction. A renowned doctor can identify an ailment at a glance because she has treated tens of thousands of patients. Judgment doesn’t appear out of thin air; it is an intuition cultivated slowly, layer upon layer, over years of accumulated knowledge and experience.
In other words, the “critical thinking” so revered in the age of AI rests on the foundation you already have. If that foundation isn’t solid, then the judgment we humans take such pride in may be little more than another kind of “hallucination.”
Yet the current pace of technological progress is hollowing out that very foundation.
Scientists running experiments have found that people who habitually let AI do their writing show the weakest neural connections—some can’t even recall what they supposedly wrote. Put another way, if we grow too accustomed to outsourcing the thinking work of reading and analysis to AI, before long we’ll lose even the ability to verify the answers. In a sense, we are gradually becoming the “new illiterates” of this high-tech age.
AI’s power is beyond question. But I often remind myself: the basics that look the most inefficient are precisely the ones with no shortcuts. Reading a long report cover to cover yourself, running the numbers by hand, thinking a logical gap through from end to end—these seemingly primitive, even foolish acts are exactly the “gym” where judgment is built. (By all means, outsource the busywork to AI—but the things that train your thinking, please keep for yourself.)
For the past few years, no matter how busy I’ve been, I’ve insisted on walking ten thousand steps a day. Faster transport is always within reach, and walking really is the slow choice—but it is precisely this “inefficient” habit that has earned me something money can’t buy: my health. Thinking works the same way. When answers are available at our fingertips, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we are still willing to stop, and leave a little room for the slow craft of thinking for ourselves.
