By 2035: The End of Human Thinking in the Age of ChatGPT

Decision fatigue fuels adoption. People hand off email replies, shopping lists, scheduling, and simple planning to AI. Each delegation feels harmless, but it gradually weakens individual decision muscles.

Students no longer memorize facts—machines recall perfectly. Without intentional pedagogy that emphasizes reasoning and synthesis, critical thinking atrophies. Knowledge becomes an API call instead of a cultivated skill.

Curricula pivot to promptcraft and system orchestration. Diplomas signal a graduate’s ability to model tasks for multi-agent AI rather than mastery of a domain. Intelligence becomes formatting and decomposition.

A single operator coordinates specialized AI agents across law, finance, sales, and production. Margins soar; headcount collapses. Societies scramble to adapt education, safety nets, and taxation to post-employment realities.

Legislatures pre-simulate policy outcomes with AI before votes. Efficiency increases, but public deliberation shrinks. The risk: optimizing for short-term metrics while eroding pluralism and consent.

Compatibility forecasting replaces swipes. Breakup probabilities are scored in advance. Convenience rises; serendipity falls. People who opt-out feel ‘irrational’—until they rediscover novelty as a feature, not a bug.

Optimization flattens taste. AI curates vacations, diets, and playlists into convergent ‘best’ choices. Without constraints that reward originality, culture drifts toward uniform presets.

Frictionless living feels wonderful—and quietly removes the need to reason. The survival skill isn’t speed; it’s discernment. Communities that cultivate debate and maker habits maintain cognitive fitness.

When AI handles everything, human choice decays into preference nudges. To remain authors of our lives, we must design systems that elevate exploration, ambiguity, and play.