A tool is a tool; The person wielding it has the power

I feel similar here. The A.I. tools have snuck into my workflow. Sometimes, they lead me exactly where I want to go. I extract what I need and move on. I use them for research, for proofs of concepts, and sometimes to challenge my thinking. I don’t yet use them to be creative, but even still, I feel my brain being patterned by the way I use A.I., and I know I need to be careful.

The author laments the lack of surprise, and I can see how this can happen:

Early on I changed how I approach research online. I stopped defaulting to Google search and started relying more on Perplexity, and other similar tools. On paper, it’s an obvious upgrade. Direct answers, cleaner summaries, fewer tabs open, and much less noise. But something subtle disappeared in the process. No more random blog posts from 2010, fewer half-relevant Reddit rabbit holes. Almost nothing that pulled me somewhere unexpected. […] I was moving faster towards answers, but along narrower paths.

It’s true that good solutions come from unexpected places. And A.I. wants you to know what answer you seek. Well, what if you don’t know the question yet? You don’t know where to poke around, but you need to start somewhere?

Using the tool too early or too often will enforce your own path for thought. The well-worn roads you have taken in the past towards a solution. It will inevitably lead to the same places over and over again. To forge new paths, you need to be ready to become lost.

And A.I. tools so far, in my experience, are too confident and too sure of themselves to allow wandering, surprise, or a sense of being lost.