Before fast food, eating a proper meal meant going to the store, buying ingredients like meat, potatoes, and flour, and cooking lunch yourself.
The food industry changed everything. We now have countless options: fast-food restaurants where you can get cheap, tasty food in minutes, and grocery stores stocked with endless packs of chips, soda, and other processed items. But the cost of outsourcing our food preparation has been extremely high : only a quarter of Americans are not overweight or obese. Diabetes, heart disease, liver conditions, and limited mobility have become extremely common. Yet, as noted, about a quarter of the population remains lean. These people are deliberate about their choices—they are careful about what they eat and how much they exercise.
That’s what happened to our bodies. Fast-forward to today, and we have AI. Our intellectual capabilities are now being outsourced. There is no need to think deeply anymore. Just write a prompt, and LLM will deliver what it considers the best solution to your problem.
Software engineers no longer write code - they write prompts that generate thousands of lines of code. Given the volume, it’s impossible to review everything manually. While there are tests meant to catch issues, few make the effort to truly understand what has been written. Similarly, university students no longer write their own papers. Why bother when AI can do it faster and often better?
My guess is that in 10–15 years, we will begin to see the full results of these changes. Just as fast food reshaped our bodies, AI will reshape our minds. The average intellectual level will decline. Solving difficult problems manually will become unusual, and most people will be incapable of doing so.
Still, as usual, a small percentage of people will continue to think for themselves — writing code, keeping complex architectures in their heads, and manually debugging issues. These skills will become rare and, perhaps, highly valuable.
Eventually, all of us will face a choice: think through a problem ourselves or simply type, “Hey ChatGPT, solve this for me…”
We already know what the majority will choose — just as they choose McDonald’s today.