Blogs I Articles, Creativity | Innovation, Leadership | Management, Transformation

The Silent Cost of Instant Answers

Share on:

What if the biggest risk of AI isn’t what it gets wrong but what it makes us forget to question?

KEY POINTS

A new study shows that AI use can cause “cognitive debt,” reducing memory, focus, and long-term learning.

AI flattens thinking for novices but boosts insight for those with deep domain expertise.

Real wisdom needs pause—use AI to speed action, not to replace thought or wonder.

Outsourcing our thinking to AI may be making us smarter on paper. But it’s making us shallower in spirit.

A groundbreaking study titled Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an LLM Assistant (June 2025) reveals something both deeply unsettling and not entirely surprising: While large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT help us complete tasks faster, in certain cases they can also reduce our long-term comprehension, memory, and motivation in relation to those tasks.

When assigned essay-writing tasks, participants who used AI assistants retained less knowledge and demonstrated less engagement than those who worked through the challenges themselves. Strikingly, the lack of engagement carried through to later tasks, appearing even when participants were asked to work again on the same topic but, this time, without the help of an LLM. Researchers call this phenomenon “cognitive debt”—the subtle erosion of mental resilience when we over-rely on machines.

This isn’t just a tech concern. It’s a human concern.

If Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary had wanted the most convenient way to the top of Everest, they would’ve taken a helicopter. But the value was in the climb.

— TRANSCEND , Faisal Hoque

That metaphor captures our dilemma. The journey itself—mental, emotional, creative—is where meaning is formed. When we surrender that process too easily to machines, we may gain efficiency, but we risk losing something essential: our capacity for discovery, discomfort, and growth.

The Age of Artificial Certainty

We live in a world addicted to answers.

With a few taps or voice commands, we summon not just facts but finished arguments, tailored opinions, and even emotional validation. AI has become our on-demand expert, therapist, and co-creator. No ambiguity required.

But what if that certainty comes at a cost?

What if the race for instant answers is weakening the very qualities that make us most human: curiosity, nuance, creativity, and emotional resilience?

As someone who’s built companies amid uncertainty, I’ve learned that clarity rarely comes from immediate answers. It emerges from wrestling with ambiguity—sitting in discomfort long enough for insight to arise.

From Curiosity to Convenience

The study makes it plain: AI-driven ease can backfire. Participants who used LLMs to write an essay thought they had done better than they had. But the data showed reduced retention, less originality, and shallower comprehension. In essence: we are speeding up but flattening out.

This mirrors a broader shift in our culture. Curiosity is being replaced by the consumption of predigested content. Discovery is replaced by summaries. Wonder is replaced by wrap-ups.

But there’s another side to this story.

When AI Becomes an Accelerator

For those who’ve already spent years cultivating deep domain knowledge—scientists, physicians, teachers, entrepreneurs—AI can act not as a crutch but as a catalyst.

When used intentionally, it becomes an amplifier of insight, not a substitute for it. It helps translate experience into action, accelerates experimentation, and assists in turning complex intuition into tangible impact.

The difference lies in how we use it.

This view is borne out in the paper, by Harvard-MIT scientists. As the authors put it, “the so-called Brain-to-LLM group exhibited significant increase in brain connectivity across all EEG frequency bands when allowed to use an LLM on a familiar topic.”

Without foundational understanding, AI encourages shortcuts. But with domain expertise, AI becomes a force multiplier—connecting dots faster, revealing patterns, or surfacing blind spots. It doesn’t replace the journey; it just improves the map.

In this sense, AI isn’t the enemy of depth—it’s a test of it. Those who have done the work will go further. Those who haven’t may become more confident but less capable.

The Disappearance of Wonder

Still, even domain experts who use LLMs extensively risk losing touch with one of the most precious parts of human intelligence: wonder.

As a father, I’ve seen how children ask questions not to be efficient but to explore. Their curiosity is inherently open-ended. But as we age, we start seeing questions as problems to solve, not invitations to imagine.

In the process, we trade curiosity for control. Immediacy for introspection.

Eastern wisdom traditions offer a gentle warning. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” Rumi urged, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

In those teachings, not knowing is not weakness. It’s sacred. A space of potential.

But LLMs don’t let us linger in not knowing. They fill the silence—instantly, fluently, and often convincingly.

The Emotional Cost of Certainty

The cost of this speed isn’t just cognitive. It’s emotional.

When my son got diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t want predictive models or algorithmic comfort. I needed presence. Stillness. The humility to accept what couldn’t be known.

Machines don’t sit with grief. They don’t metabolize fear or awe. Only we can do that.

And when we shortcut that emotional process—whether through AI or distraction—we diminish our capacity for transformation.

From Knowing to Noticing

So how do we navigate this paradox?

How do we embrace AI as a tool for acceleration without losing our depth, presence, or soul?

We shift from knowing to noticing.

Notice your impulse to resolve uncertainty too quickly.
Notice when you reach for AI out of laziness versus leverage.
Notice how you engage with discomfort—intellectually and emotionally.

Here are some ways I protect the space between question and answer:

Pause before you prompt. Ask: What do I really want to understand? What might I discover on my own?
Write in your own voice. Even when messy, original thought deepens awareness.
Embrace friction. Let at least one task a week be AI-free. Struggle is the soil in which insight grows.
Use AI to accelerate insight, not replace inquiry. Make it a sparring partner, not a savior.

Protecting the Sacred Pause

AI is here to stay. And used wisely, it can accelerate not just efficiency but transformation.

But wisdom requires pause. And pause requires the courage to not know—for a while, at least.

If we want to preserve our humanity in the age of intelligent machines, we must remember that not knowing isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature. A portal to wisdom.

Because that pause—fragile, uncomfortable, and sacred—is where meaning lives. And meaning, unlike information, can’t be downloaded. It must be earned.

[Photo: DustandAshes/Shutterstock]

Original article @ Psychology Today.

Share on: