We are learning to replace our own minds. Not all at once, but step by step. A message arrives. We copy it into ChatGPT, ask for a reply, and paste the output back. The words come from our account, but not from our mind.
A report is due. We feed our notes into AI, ask it to structure arguments, polish sentences, even suggest conclusions. The work carries our name, but the insight does not.
A decision looms. We consult the algorithm, follow its recommendation, and call it judgment. The choice is ours in appearance, but not in origin.
Convenience today becomes cognitive atrophy tomorrow. We move through the world with borrowed certainty, borrowed language, borrowed insight. Conversations, tasks, even our own reflections become mediated, filtered, authored by code. The machine writes; we sign.
The unsettling part is not that AI thinks for us. It is how easily we let it, how quietly the mind we trusted to be ours has become a conduit.
