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These past two years, I’ve been a huge consumer of generative AI. I think I’m starting to lose my ability to think independently because I know AI can support my thinking, so I rely on it to validate my thoughts. When I write, I want it to check my grammar. When I’m about to create a logic flow, I ask if there are any concerns. When I want to send an email, I ask if my tone sounds weird. If I want to do or learn something outside my expertise, I can just ask AI. It’s actually very helpful.
But I realized it’s also giving my brain a really bad habit: doing the bare minimum, putting in the least effort, because I can always use generative AI to enhance it later. As I’m writing this right now, I already know I’m going to copy this entire text into ChatGPT later and ask it to correct the grammar.
Of course, I try to fix it by telling myself, “I’ll work on this or that later without relying too much on AI,” but that never happens 😭 I know it boosts productivity a lot, but without real comprehension, it makes me skip fundamentals. It just feels wrong, and I don’t know what it’ll do to my brain in the long term.
What I’m currently trying to do to keep my brain working on complex tasks is find activities I enjoy enough that I don’t want AI to do them for me, and I don’t need AI to polish the final result either. The most satisfying ones are the ones where I’m the only one doing the deep work.
Playing chess
Chess can be really annoying, but I’m surprised by how much I like it. I’m still super, super, super bad, but I’m glad I ended up getting interested in it. I haven’t researched whether it actually trains my brain, but it definitely stimulates it.
Drawing and animating
I stopped drawing for 3 years, but now I’m back~! I’m not completely anti-AI when it comes to the creative process, but personally, I’m really proud of ideas I can manifest into my artwork. So of course the highest satisfaction comes from making it myself.
3D modeling
I almost gave up halfway through learning Blender, but I made it to a functional simple isometric room (christina-room.netlify.app). It was very confusing at first, but after tweaking things here and there and watching tutorials, I started to get the hang of it, and I really love creating stuff in it. I’m already planning to make something new in the future!
NGL, midway through, I wanted to finish my simple project with help from AI, but I didn’t know how to make AI work for me in Blender. LOL. So I forced myself to keep watching tutorials and finish it on my own.
Content creation
I love posting my creations and telling stories online. The work involves video editing, creative writing, research, audio production, graphic design, and sometimes photo editing.
To be completely honest, I’ve tried using AI before, but no matter how much I refine the prompt, the result feels stiff, robot-coded. Even if it’s just a script or plain text, someone who interacts with AI daily can tell it was made by AI. It lacks personality. I don’t like that, so now I produce everything myself.
Keep learning and trying new things
I love learning new things, even when they seem “useless” and don’t make any money. That includes simple activities like learning instruments, revisiting physics and math, cooking, and bodybuilding.
And honestly, it’s also really fortunate that with AI, I can try a lot of things in the way I want.