We are living through the most profound shift in human learning since the invention of the printing press. AI now writes our memos, summarizes research, drafts budgets, and even suggests strategic options. In a world where answers arrive instantly, what matters most is the quality of the mind behind the question. As Daniel Kahneman argued long before generative AI, fast answers without deep thinking are a recipe for error (Kahneman, 2011).
The fretting has swelled from a murmur to a clamor, all variations on the same foreboding theme: " Your Brain on ChatGPT." " AI Is Making You Dumber." " AI Is Killing Critical Thinking." Once, the fear was of a runaway intelligence that would wipe us out, maybe while turning the planet into a paper-clip factory. Now that chatbots are going the way of Google-moving from the miraculous to the taken-for-granted-the anxiety has shifted, too, from apocalypse to atrophy.
There's an old Latin phrase that has stayed with me lately: Succisa virescit. The translation roughly means, "When cut down, we grow back stronger." Originally the sixth-century motto of the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, it reflects a simple but profound truth about the human condition-growth often begins in the aftermath of loss. What was once a call to spiritual and physical resilience has become, for me, a powerful metaphor for cognition itself,