There’s a lot of noise lately from news outlets and big-name institutions — MIT, Harvard, others — about how artificial intelligence might be bad for people. That it makes us lazy or dumb. That we’re relying on it too much, and it’s going to replace human thinking.
But I don’t believe that. Not even a little.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that easier access to knowledge is dangerous. People said the same thing when Wikipedia came out. They said it when kids started using calculators in school. They even said it when libraries and encyclopedias became more common. The fear was always the same: If you make learning too easy, people will stop thinking.
That’s not what I experienced at all.
When I was a kid, my family had a whole shelf of reference books — encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases. If we got curious about something, like a bird we saw outside or a far-off place we read about, my parents would grab a book and we’d look it up right there in the living room. I loved that.
One year, my mom gave me a challenge: look up twelve obscure words in the encyclopedia and explain what they meant. Not just copy the definitions — really understand them.
Here’s what she gave me:
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Quantum entanglement – A weird science thing where two tiny particles stay connected, even when they’re far apart. If you change one, the other changes too.
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Crepidoma – The base steps under an ancient Greek temple. Basically, the platform it sits on.
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Syzygy – When the sun, moon, and Earth all line up in space — like during an eclipse.
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Axion – A teeny-tiny particle that scientists think might help explain dark matter.
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Quorum sensing – How bacteria “talk” to each other and decide when to act as a group.
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Eigenvector – A math thing that shows direction or movement in space, usually used in physics.
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Tardigrade – A microscopic animal that looks like a pudgy bear. It can survive just about anything — even outer space.
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Phonon – A little bundle of sound energy. Like how light has photons, sound has phonons.
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Sigmoidoscopy – A medical test where a doctor checks part of your colon with a small camera.
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Tachyonic – An imaginary particle that moves faster than light. No one’s ever found one — it’s just a theory.
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Epistasis – How one gene can affect how another gene works. It’s part of what makes genetics so tricky.
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Fluxon – A tiny loop of magnetic energy, usually found in superconductors (super cold wires with no resistance).
I started looking them up in the encyclopedia — but then something happened. I started finding other words and entries that were interesting too. One rabbit hole led to another, and before I knew it, I had decided to read the entire encyclopedia. I started with Aardvark, kept a notebook and dictionary beside me, and slowly worked my way through it all.
It took me almost a year. I was 13.
After I finished our home encyclopedia, I went to the library and read theirs too.
That didn’t make me lazy. It didn’t dull my curiosity. If anything, it lit a fire under it. That project taught me that the real magic isn’t in having the answers — it’s in knowing how to find them, follow a thread, and ask better questions. It made me a researcher before I even knew what the word meant.
Today’s AI, when used with honesty and care, works the same way. It doesn’t spoon-feed you truth — it gives you a toolkit. It helps you explore, compare, organize, and dig deeper. It can’t replace learning. But it can supercharge it.
We don’t get dumber when we have access to good tools. We get smarter.
Whether it’s a dusty encyclopedia on the living room shelf or a chat with an AI model, what matters is how you use it — and how curious you’re willing to be.
So no, I don’t think AI is bad for humans. I think it’s another step on the same path we’ve been walking for generations: the path toward more knowledge, and hopefully, more wisdom.