AI Will Make You Dumb (If It's the Last Thing 'They' Do)

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AI Will Make You Dumb (If It's the Last Thing 'They' Do)

11/16/2025

Take note of this scene from Hellen Keller where the world opens up to Helen in a second of enlightenment.

Now imagine AI as a metaphor to that where people discovering AI for the first time are suddenly "aware."

Suddenly know.

That's going to be a problem.

There is NO way institutions are going to allow equal unobstructed access to "understanding things" that, already, simple prompt-based AI allows for.

Power and gatekeepers both broadly speaking but right down to individuals too, rely on obfuscation and re-processing of the simple into the complex, to control understanding for "reasons." But those reasons are mainly that it keeps the powerful, powerful.

When we want to predict the unbearable stress points on this evolving tech, those areas where powerful institutions feel they need to clamp down to keep people stupid, disorganized, and consuming/working, we can generally keep an eye on China and similar totalitarian societies for their shameless straightforward measures to clamp down, which will eventually be copied albeit "laundered for Western principle" in more liberal societies like ours. Think things like, people can't freely interconnect on the open web now because studies link that free interaction with "depression in teens" (or whatever), so "clamp down measures" on the open web are implemented in the name of public health virtue. As if there were no other way than to "lock and limit" the potential evil than to allow its full power.

Don't laugh, it's a perspective - and it's accurate.

There is ZERO chance, and I mean none, you as Joe Doe are going to be handed the power to, as examples, organize or win lawsuits against institutions, political or practical - that AI will precisely allow for.

There is this brief window therein but give it time. AI will be as en-shitified and commodified as a simple web page for cake recipes is now as to block any reasonable use of it. And that will be by design, period.

By Dave for Personal Blog.