Thinking Ex Machina
Using AI doesn’t mean we have to give up our humanity
“How do you say to your child in the night?
Nothing’s all black, but then nothing’s all white
How do you say it will all be all right
When you know that it might not be true?
What do you do?”
— Stephen Sondheim, 1986
In the annals of ancient Greek drama, we find the concept of deus ex machina (from the Greek: ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός), or “god from the machine,” for when an unsolvable dilemma quickly resolved via an unexpected or unlikely occurrence.
It was introduced by Aeschylus in Eumenides, where the actors playing the gods were lowered onto the stage with a crane (the machine) and became a staple in many of Euripides’ plays.
More modern examples include a naval officer suddenly arriving to save the boys in Lord of the Flies, the aliens succumbing to bacteria in War of the Worlds, or Batman pulling out a can of “Bat Shark-Repellent” from his utility belt to escape from a shark attack in the 1966 film Batman.
But lately, another deus ex machina has emerged: namely, artificial intelligence.
The advent of AI has been exciting and terrifying, giving us the power of gods by enabling users to conjure and create research papers, essays, emails, charts, images, apps, and more as easily as Helios could summon his chariot to whisk Medea across the sky.
With a clever enough prompt, we see the convergence of immediacy and omnipotence and suddenly realize how intoxicating it is to have the power of the immortals or the wealthy at our fingertips.
Thinking Clearly
In some ways, AI stands as a proxy for wealth. In a recent entry (“The Worship of Wealth”) we looked at the surrender of morality in service to money. There is a similar trend happening with as we surrender our cognitive selves in service to AI.
We’re seeing a decline in cognitive thinking abilities, as we make AI platforms think for us instead of processing things ourselves.1 2 And when we only expose ourselves to AI-generated results, we see a downward spiral of creative thinking, creating homogenous, less original thinking.3
Not to mention that AI is far from perfect. In its 2025 State of AI Report, ICONIQ notes that 39% of companies note that AI hallucinations are a major challenge, along with trust. If we can’t trust AI to deliver dependable and factual results, why are we delegating our critical and creative thinking to it?
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”
— David McCullough, 2002
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter
To give ourselves over to AI is a folly, just as it might be to entirely surrender our work to machines. We need to keep thinking and to find work with purpose.
Related:
The ideal state will be a combination of the human and the machine, working in tandem, to produce better results. Artificial intelligence and human intelligence, or as
recently put it:“Human Intuition. Human Inventiveness. Human Insight. Human Inspiration. Human Interaction. Human Innovation. Human Iteration.”
The future of humans vs. AI is not an either/or choice. It is a necessary integration of the two.
Children Will Listen
AI continues to develop at a breakneck pace. It has been rapidly adopted in sectors such as healthcare (38%), marketing & sales (34%), financial services (65%), and retail (56%).4
As is typical with technological developments, we find ourselves at the crossroads of “Can We?” and “Should We?”. In such a moment, I find it helpful to channel Stephen Sondheim.
It’s admittedly an odd side-path—or at least an abrupt right turn—to take, but venture Into the Woods with me for a moment.
In the finale of his 1986 musical, Sondheim concludes with the song “Children Will Listen,” in which we are reminded of the reality that we teach others by what we say and what we do, as they pay attention to us:
Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
To learn what to be
Careful before you say “Listen to me”
Children will listen
The result may extend beyond even what our intentions initially were:
Careful the wish you make
Wishes are children
Careful the path they take
Wishes come true, not free
Careful the spell you cast
Not just on children
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell
Children will listen
Whether we’re using AI or any other technology, or simply communicating with our people, the final stanza reminds us of what we need to be mindful of:
Into the woods, each time you go
There’s more to learn of what you know
Into the woods, but not too slow—
Into the woods, it’s nearing midnight—
Into the woods to mind the wolf
To heed the witch
To honor the giant
To mind
To heed
To find
To think
To teach
To join
Thought Experiment
We’re getting to a dangerous point if we substitute AI-generated content for thinking. As
recently observed in :“The Machine doesn’t “understand” anything. It’s just pattern recognition dressed up as intelligence. It lacks judgment. It has no experience; it just reflects a statistical model of what everyone else has experienced. It cannot therefore think.”
What is the purpose of thinking, anyway?
Why does thinking matter if we can use the power of machines to circumvent the difficult work of wracking our brains?
Those who produce products use their thinking to develop ever better products to help people achieve their goals. Those who provide services use thought to consider how they might improve those services.
The means of AI provide an expediency to those ends. So why should we worry about losing our critical and creative thinking if we’re achieving our goals more quickly?
Consider this:
Instead of thinking to create a product for others, we think to help ourselves develop.
René Descartes famously documented the first principle of Western philosophy with his statement “I think, therefore I am.”
It stands to reason then, that if we give up thinking, we give up our humanity.
Something to think about.
If you made it this far, you might want to see the follow-up piece, State of Mind, with lots of further reading to help you expand your thinking.
There’s so much to learn,
A 2025 study published in Societies found a significant negative correlation (r=−0.68,p<0.001r=−0.68,p<0.001) between frequent use of AI tools and critical thinking scores. The research identified “cognitive offloading”—the tendency to delegate thinking tasks to AI—as a primary driver of this decline. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ai-linked-eroding-critical-skills.html#google_vignette
Lee, H.-P., A. Sarkar, L. Tankelevitch, I. Drosos, S. Rintel, R. Banks, and N. Wilson. 2025. “The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers.” In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘25), April 26–May 1, 2025, Yokohama, Japan. ACM. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf
“Is AI causing a decline in cognitive and creative skills?” by Ben Eubanks, Unleash, February 5, 2025
Artificial Intelligence Statistics: A Deep Dive into Artificial Intelligence Trends and Stats, Magnet ABA, February 28, 2025
In the beginning, God created research papers, essays, emails, charts, images, and apps.
Spell checker cannot identify words I use often when I am typing them or when they are not typed properly. In fact, automatic spell checker is my biggest daily pet peeve since it changes my words with horrible suggestions that show a complete lack of comprehending anything that has to do with words and communication. For this reason shown to me daily, the idea that AI will perform any thinking for me is just below my threshold of being able to suspend belief. Thanks for the topic and stats so we are aware.