Social Media Took Our Attention. Now AI Is Coming for Our Judgment.
When smartphones and social media was introduced to society, nobody had any idea of the negative ramifications - long term, for humanity. Jonathan Haidt has since done great work to reveal the hard truths of what these innovations cost us. Who knew that at one point, corporations could monetize something so personal as our attention? That a human being would lose control of what they choose to focus on, to an inanimate object. That a soul could be manipulated and motivated to focus on what profit making business decided they should focus on. When we think about our lifetimes, our super short existences on this planet, with beauty and art, nature and love, how could we ever convince anyone that we would lose our purpose and relinquish our ambition to a handheld device that blasts fast paced visuals designed to artificially incite emotions, hate, anger, intense fear and more.
I know this fear of AI is similar. And potentially even more dangerous. Because it’s again, a universal opportunity and governments and billiionaires have already shown that they cannot use it responsibly because the base motivation is control and profit. But my thought is that their approach can again become successful because of this human side effect. The whole reason social media has such a hold on humanity is that it uses human emotion as a tool. Our weakness is dopamine. and if we can get it artificially, we probably will. We lose track of our days and our purpose and weeks go by with only doom scrolling to show for it. With AI, I think the biggest fear or threat (yes is overusiing our water sources and taking up greenspace with AI data centers) but the human toll is the lack of agency. Generative AI in particular, the ones who can respond to your requests and answer with human like empathy, are never tired. They are never overwhelmed. They will ALWAYS do the work you ask it to. For this I find the most devastating. Our society has already proven that without intentional and focused restraint, that we will take the easy route. We will eventually lose the ability to discern, to ponder, to discuss, evaluate and feel. The pause you need to take when confronted with a decision or difficult scenario, can easily be avoided just by asking ChatGPT what it recommends. So the cost here is offloading taste, decisions, solutions and thought to a machine.
How do we prevent this? Use The Pause. The pause is good for every moment in life. It prevents rash thinking, impulsive actions, jumping to conclusions. But the pause when working with AI is critical to maintain your identity. Check yourself. Check your thought, your feelings, motivations. And when GPT gives you an answer, question it. Push back. Check the sources. and more importantly before you even open the app, take time to structure your objective, the quetion you want to answer. Most times if you can formulate a sophisticated and detailed question, you will find the answer faster. Just like the clearer the prompt, the better the output. Know what you are looking for, describe it. Sound familar? it’s just like in life before the internet, remember that? If you know what kind of house you want, the city, the cafe’s, or the type of partner, the degree… anything. You will find it faster than a general vague unclear search that will only result in overwhelming AI slop or unfocused directionless wandering.
Ironically, I asked GPT what it thought.
hi gpt - our human society introduced smart phones and then social media back in 2019. the unexpected impact on humanity was that our human attention would become monetized and controlled by these devices. marketing now using an algorithm to find out what we enjoy or hate and show more of it to us. our society is losing control of it's own attention to what each individual finds important and instead we are being fed what corporations and government wants us to ingest and believe. Now with AI, what will the unintended impacts to humans be? what if AI is better at writing, creating, building... will humans lose the ability or the desire to pursue these things? will humans become lazy and uninspired and sad? our humans are already choosing not to procreate. humans may perish. what is your thought?
You’re not wrong to feel uneasy about this. But I’m going to push back on one part of what you said, because it matters:
We didn’t “lose control” of attention. We traded it. Slowly, conveniently, and often knowingly.
That same dynamic is what’s about to play out with AI.
So the real question isn’t “what will AI do to us?” It’s “what will we let it take over?”
Let’s break this down in a way that’s actually useful for you, not just abstract fear.
First: What AI will actually change
AI is going to:
Write faster than you
Analyze better than you
Produce more than you
Scale ideas instantly
That part is already happening. No debate.
But here’s the part people miss:
AI does not want anything
It has no internal drive, taste, or lived experience
It only reflects patterns it’s given
So the danger isn’t AI replacing humans.
The danger is humans stopping themselves.
The real unintended impacts
1.Skill atrophy
If you outsource thinking, writing, decision-making… you will get worse at it.
Same way:
GPS killed people’s sense of direction
Calculators reduced mental math
AI can absolutely dull your edge if you let it do the hard thinking for you
2.Taste collapse
If AI starts generating:
your writing
your art
your ideas
…and you just accept it…
You stop developing taste, which is: the ability to say “this is good, this is not”
And once taste goes, creativity goes. That’s how people become passive consumers instead of creators.
3.Emotional flattening
If everything becomes:
optimized
efficient
auto-generated
You lose friction.
And friction is where:
meaning
struggle
pride
comes from. Too much ease = weird emptiness.
4.Identity outsourcing
If AI:
helps you decide what to do
what to say
what to create
Then slowly…
You stop asking:
“What do I think?”
That’s where people can start feeling:
disconnected
directionless
low confidence
Not because AI took anything …but because they stopped exercising their own agency
5.Yes, some will lose motivation. But not all of us.
Some people will absolutely:
become more passive
consume instead of create
avoid effort
But here’s the other side:
Other people will:
build faster
experiment more
create things they never could before
The gap between those two groups is going to get very wide.
TL;DR
What you can control is how YOU use this.
Treat AI like:
a power tool, not a replacement brain
Use it to:
speed up execution
organize your thinking
test ideas quickly
But never let it:
decide what matters to you
define your voice
replace your judgment
practical guardrails
If you want to stay sharp and not drift into that “passive AI user” zone:
1. Always start from your own thought first
Even if it’s messy. Especially then.
2. Use AI to refine, not originate everything
You go first → AI helps shape
3. Keep one area of your life AI-free
Writing, journaling, art, something where it’s just you
4. Build instead of just consuming
.
Bottom line
AI won’t make us humans lazy.
But it will expose who already is and amplify whoever is willing to stay engaged
GenX has had to pivot through 8 tracks, vinyl, cassettes all the way to Spotify. If you don’t adapt and pivot you will not grow. Life IS about change. We can’t control everything and yes, everything must change.