Is AI Making You Dumber?
Would you feel comfortable letting ChatGPT be president of the United States?
You might welcome its help gathering information or comparing possible solutions. But handing it responsibility for the decisions and their outcomes is a different proposition.
That distinction matters in our everyday lives, too. When we use AI, are we getting assistance with our thinking, or handing over the thinking itself?
At Cole-Dalton Marketing, we see the value in AI. But we also believe its convenience deserves scrutiny. A tool that helps us produce more doesn't automatically help us understand more.
So, is AI making you dumber?
The honest answer is that it depends on what you're asking it to do, how you evaluate its answers, and whether you're still doing the work of thinking.
Getting an Answer Isn't the Same as Understanding It
There's a term for using external tools to reduce mental effort: cognitive offloading.
We do it when we save a phone number, write a grocery list, or set a calendar reminder. Offloading can free our attention for something more important.
The concern becomes more complicated when we offload judgment, reasoning, and learning.
An overview from the American Psychological Association examines emerging research on these questions. As researcher Jackson G. Lu explains: "The key issue is not whether but how AI is used."
A 2024 theoretical review explores how AI assistance might contribute to skill decay or interfere with the development of expertise. It raises important questions, rather than proving that chatbot use universally reduces intelligence.
That distinction matters. Finishing a task with assistance and developing the ability to perform it yourself are different outcomes.
Consider asking AI to explain why an advertising campaign failed. It may produce a convincing analysis of the audience, message, budget, and landing page. But if you accept that explanation without examining the campaign data, what have you learned?
You have an explanation. You haven't yet established that it's the right one.
Is AI Challenging You or Confirming What You Already Believe?
We should be especially careful when an answer feels satisfying because it agrees with us.
Sycophancy is the tendency to agree with or flatter the user excessively, and research into AI sycophancy has found that assistants can favor responses aligned with a user's beliefs over truthful answers. This creates an opening for confirmation bias: giving more weight to information that supports what we already believe.
Imagine asking, "Why is my current marketing strategy better than what my competitors are doing?"
The question already assumes your strategy is better. An agreeable answer can supply reasons to defend that assumption without establishing whether it is true.
Now consider asking, "Under what conditions would my competitors' approach outperform mine? What evidence would help us compare?" You're inviting examination rather than reassurance.
Offloading and confirmation bias are distinct concerns, but they can reinforce one another. When we stop evaluating an answer, agreement can start to feel like independent validation.
Your own knowledge belongs in the review process. So does a willingness to discover that your initial judgment was wrong.
When Less Thinking Becomes More AI Slop
In marketing, the consequences of uncritical use of AI become public.
A business can quickly generate an ad, flyer, or commercial. That makes experimentation more accessible, especially for small businesses working with limited budgets. But accessibility doesn't remove the need for judgment.
Does the image represent the actual service? Are the claims accurate? Does the message sound like this particular business? Is there anything meaningful beneath the polished presentation?
"AI slop" generally describes low-quality, generic, or inaccurate AI-generated content. The problem extends beyond obvious visual mistakes: a perfectly readable ad can still say nothing distinctive or useful.
The Digital Marketing Institute's discussion of AI slop describes risks to brand credibility and cites research linking perceived AI-generated content to reduced trust and purchase consideration. That doesn't mean every customer dislikes every use of AI. It does mean businesses should question the assumption that cheaper, faster content is automatically better marketing.
Our view is that losing credibility can outweigh the convenience of producing an ad quickly. If the audience questions the care behind the message, the savings may have come at a considerable cost.
Toys 'R' Us, Dove, and the Story Behind the Technology
Two branded examples help illustrate the decisions involved.
In 2024, Toys 'R' Us announced a brand film created with Sora, which envisioned founder Charles Lazarus's early dreams and featured Geoffrey the Giraffe.
The technological novelty attracted attention. But as the Digital Marketing Institute recounts, it also drew criticism for visual inconsistencies and for using generated imagery in a story about childhood imagination.
Dove offers a different approach. Its UK "Keep Beauty Real" campaign connects its response to AI with its longstanding position on beauty and representation. Dove commits never to use AI to create or distort images of women.
These examples aren't a controlled comparison proving one production method sells more products. They illustrate how technology choices can support or complicate the story a brand wants to tell.
For a small business, the lesson is practical. Start with something worth communicating: a customer's experience, a difficult problem solved, a meaningful belief, or evidence of your work.
AI may help develop the presentation. The story still needs substance, direction, and a reason for the audience to care.
AI Search Visibility Doesn't Eliminate the Need for Credibility
The same thinking applies to AI-Powered search.
The Forbes article "AI Is Killing Marketing As We Know It: So What Comes Next?" Steven Wolfe Pereira argues that discovery is shifting toward AI-generated recommendations and that many marketing tasks will become automated. He presents a future in which traditional SEO tactics lose relevance, while brand strength, customer data, and trust become increasingly valuable.
We agree that businesses should pay attention to how customers discover information. But the prediction that traditional SEO is becoming obsolete deserves scrutiny, too.
Google's guidance states that established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional requirements or special optimizations needed to appear. That guidance applies specifically to Google's AI search features, rather than every platform.
The distinction matters. Adapting to changes in search is reasonable. Accepting every confident claim about those changes without examining the evidence is the very thinking habit we should question.
A checklist promising AI visibility deserves scrutiny. What evidence supports it? Which platform does it address? Does it improve the information available to customers? How would we measure whether it helps the business?
There is no guaranteed formula for inclusion. Google's guidance does not establish that AI systems are impossible to manipulate, but it gives businesses reason to question claims that special tricks are required.
At Cole-Dalton, our approach is to build useful material grounded in actual knowledge: accurate service information, specific case studies, and thoughtful answers to customers' questions. These provide substance for people to evaluate, wherever they discover the business.
Pereira's emphasis on brand strength and trust is especially relevant here. If chasing AI visibility leads a business to publish generic, inaccurate, or careless content, it risks weakening the credibility it needs to earn customers.
Being mentioned by an AI system may help someone discover you. Giving that person a reason to trust you still requires care.
Three Ways to Make AI Exercise Your Thinking
You can change the role AI plays by changing what you ask of it.
Stress-Test Your Logic
Write down your own position first. Then ask:
"Give me the strongest reasonable objections to this argument. Identify unsupported assumptions and explain what evidence would change the conclusion."
Evaluate the objections, too. An instruction to disagree can produce weak criticism just as an instruction to agree can produce weak praise.
Explore Other Perspectives
Ask how a skeptical customer, a first-time buyer, or someone unfamiliar with your industry might interpret your message.
What would confuse them? Which claims would they question? What information would they need before acting?
Use those responses to generate questions for real customers. A simulated perspective can suggest possibilities; it cannot establish what your audience actually thinks.
Use the Socratic Method
Ask AI to question you before providing an answer:
"Help me examine this decision one question at a time. Ask about my evidence, assumptions, and alternatives before offering a recommendation."
This keeps you involved in forming the conclusion.
For all three approaches, check important factual claims against their sources. Asking AI to critique itself does not independently verify its answers.
So, Is AI Making You Dumber?
AI can help you examine an argument, explore unfamiliar ideas, and make room for more demanding work. It can also make it easier to skip the practice through which understanding develops and provide reassuring explanations for beliefs you haven't tested.
The research doesn't justify declaring that everyone using AI is becoming less intelligent. It gives us reasons to examine our habits.
Before accepting an answer, ask yourself: Do I understand it? What supports it? What might contradict it? Could I explain why I'm acting on it? Before publishing an ad, ask whether it gives customers something accurate, relevant, and worth their attention.
At Cole-Dalton Marketing, we believe human experience, careful judgment, and meaningful storytelling remain essential to marketing. AI can contribute to that work. Its output still deserves examination.
The next time you open a chatbot, try asking a question that makes you think harder.
