Artificial Intelligence Will Make Us Stupid Like Machinery Made Us Soft

We better start pushing back now

Picture this: Four Sikhs stride into a title office to close a deal to buy a convenience store. Two elders had beards flowing like an Old Testament prophet. Nothing new there.

But the two young Sikhs? Their golf shirts were stretched taut over bulky biceps and pecs. I’ll confess, the sight tickled me, though I couldn’t pin down why.

For millennia, the human body was a beast of burden, hauling loads and trudging miles under the sun’s indifferent glare. Then the machines came and removed those burdens.

We then got soft. Flabby. Our muscles atrophied while we sat, slack-jawed, in the glow of screens and the hum of engines.

By the 1970s, the pioneers of fitness—joggers pounding pavement, weightlifters grunting under iron—were freaks, eccentrics, vain weirdos in a world that hadn’t placed a single gym in my small town.

Fast forward fifty years, and the tide’s turned. Folks are sprinting like they’re fleeing a predator, heaving barbells like they’re auditioning for a Viking saga, or thrashing through HIIT workouts like berserkers in a blood frenzy. My burg now has four weight gyms.

Even the Sikhs are working out at the gym, even though they hail from cultures where everyday physical toil is still the norm (I suspect that’s why the sight tickled me).

The West’s tech took the pressure off our flesh, and the consequences showed. We see the results all around us, ranging from folks who drive their cars to reach a destination 200 yards away to obese folks wheezing under the strain of traversing Wal-Mart.

But the motivated among us? We’re fighting back, sweating and straining against the machines that made us doughy. We’re getting jacked.

But now the same daggone thing’s happening to our minds. Artificial Intelligence is here, and it’s coming for our brains like a coked-up Wormwood coming for a soul.

I used to spell like a lexicographer’s wet dream, nailing every word under Webster’s sun. Now? Spellcheck’s been my crutch for a decade, and my orthography’s gone to seed. The resoolts speak for themselves.

It’s not just spelling. AI’s creeping into every corner of our digital lives. Run a search, and it’s AI-curated results. Ask a question, and Grok’s there, tempting you like a dog-eared Playboy under a teenager’s mattress. You can try to dodge it—ride your bike to work, walk the golf course, shun the wheelbarrow in the garden like some Luddite saint. I do some of that myself.

But let’s be real: when I drive my daughter back to college in Kansas this month, I ain’t strapping her dorm junk to my back and hoofing it cross-country.

And I’m not quitting AI either. Gotta use it, frankly. QR codes are already strangling daily life. Try buying a plane ticket without a smartphone.

It’s only gonna get uglier.

So what’s the play?

Mindfulness, the gurus say, is a start. Watch yourself when you lean on AI. Notice your brain getting a little squishier, a little lazier. That awareness alone might keep you sharp.

But I doubt it’s nearly enough. Just like a Sunday stroll won’t cut it in a world of easy transportation, your day job and a little awareness won’t keep your mind honed. You’ve gotta get mentally jacked.

Mindfulness, sure.

But also read books, real ones, with pages that smell of dust and ink. Fifteen minutes uninterrupted is a good start, but you better go a lot longer than that.

Dive into the arts. Writing an essay is good, but you better try writing a book, even you just plan on putting it in a drawer like those great nineteenth-century Russian writers who never expected to be read.

Wrestle with Wordl, Sudoku, Rubik’s Cube, or some other brain-teasing game. That’s good, but you better be prepared to grab The Big-Ass Book of New York Times Saturday Crossword Puzzles and finish it in a month.

Pick a mental regimen, any regimen, maybe combining all the above.

But whatever you choose, you’re gonna haffta go hard.

This AI thing? It’s a death match against the left hemisphere (it has no right hemisphere). You’d better approach it like those gym berserkers, veins popping, eyes wild, ready to fight for every ounce of your mind’s strength.

Because if you don’t, the great softening will claim you, and you’ll be left as flabby upstairs as we all were downstairs before the fitness revolution kicked in.