Literacy

You think ChatGPT is ’thinking’? It’s rolling dice, one token at a time. LLMs don’t plan, reason, or understand: they sample from probability distributions based on statistical patterns. Worse, if you’re working in Swedish, Arabic, or most non-English languages, you’re getting a fundamentally degraded product due to tokenization bias. And as these models increasingly train on their own outputs, they’re collapsing into irreversible mediocrity. Understanding what’s actually happening changes everything.

Research shows measurable cognitive decline after just four months of LLM use. Like GPS destroyed our spatial navigation abilities, AI is atrophying our thinking. Here’s what the science reveals, the warning signs you’re in too deep, why organizations should be terrified, and what we can do about it.

LLMs are sophisticated pattern-matching engines, not thinking machines. Our hardwired tendency to anthropomorphize combined with dopamine-driven addiction pathways is changing how we interact with these tools. Understanding what they actually are is the first step to using them wisely.

Sugar went from luxury to ubiquitous poison before we understood what it was doing to us. We’re doing the exact same thing with AI, adding it to everything without genuine use cases, while it erodes literacy and critical thinking. By the time we realize what we’ve lost, the infrastructure will already be built.