You reach for AI to draft a simple email. Just a quick client follow-up, nothing overly complex. But as you stare at the blank screen, something feels off. You're not sure how to start. The words aren't coming. It's been a while since you wrote one from scratch.

So you open ChatGPT. Three seconds later, you've got a perfectly serviceable draft. You tweak a line, hit send, and move on.

No big deal, right?

Except it is. Because six months ago, you could write that email in your sleep. It was second nature. Now? You're not sure you could do it without help.

And here's the uncomfortable question: When did that shift happen?

From Tool to Crutch

AI is incredibly good at making work easier. It drafts emails, formats documents, summarizes reports, generates ideas. It saves time. It improves output. It reduces friction.

And that's exactly why it's dangerous.

Because the line between using AI as a tool and becoming dependent on AI as a crutch is thinner than most people realize. And once you cross it, you might not notice until it's too late.

It starts innocently. You use AI to speed up a task. Then you use it for another. Then another. Pretty soon, you're not thinking through the task anymore. You're just handing it off. You stop practicing the skill. You stop asking yourself, "Should I even be using AI for this, or should I just do it myself? What value does the task itself provide in me doing it?"

The thinking muscle atrophies. And you don't realize it's happening until you try to flex it again and it's gone.

The Real Skill Isn't Prompting; It's Discernment

Everyone's obsessed with learning how to use AI. How to write better prompts. How to get better outputs. How to integrate it into workflows.

But that's not the skill that matters moving forward. That's table stakes.

The skill that matters is knowing when to use AI and when not to.

Because if you're constantly using AI for every task, deciding which AI tool to use when, orchestrating outputs and stitching them together, then you and your thinking are no longer a unique part of the process. You're just another step in the workflow. And that step? It's probably more efficiently replaced by AI in the near future.

AI is excellent at certain things:

But AI is a terrible replacement for:

The danger isn't that AI can't do these things. The danger is that if you stop doing them yourself, you lose the ability to tell the difference.

You lose the ability to evaluate whether AI's output is actually good or just good enough. You lose the edge that comes from wrestling with a problem yourself. You lose the judgment that makes you valuable in the first place.

And here's the kicker: If you can't explain why AI's answer is good, you shouldn't be using it.

What Happens When You Can't Think Without It

Let's say you've been outsourcing more and more of your thinking to AI: emails, memos, proposals, strategy docs, all drafted by AI, lightly edited by you.

What happens when the tool isn't available? What happens when it gives you a mediocre answer and you don't realize it? What happens when your client asks you to explain your reasoning and you can't, because you didn't actually do the reasoning (or even follow the reasoning)?

Here's what happens:

You become replaceable.

Because if the thinking isn't yours, if the judgment isn't yours, if the value you're adding is just "I ran it through AI and cleaned it up," then you're not the operator anymore. You're just the middleman. And, as we're seeing in the current job market, middlemen get automated out.

The more you outsource your thinking, the less you're needed. It's that simple.

And the irony? The people automating themselves out of relevance are often the ones who think they're being efficient.

You Are the Operator, Not the Other Way Around

AI is a tool. A powerful one. But you are the operator.

And operators who stop thinking eventually stop being operators.

The goal isn't to avoid AI. The goal is to use it strategically: in ways that amplify your judgment, not replace it. To let it handle the grunt work so you have more capacity for the high-value thinking. To treat it as leverage, not a shortcut.

But that requires something most people aren't doing: thinking critically about when and how you use it.

Here's the awareness test. Ask yourself:

If the answer to any of these makes you uncomfortable, you're not using AI. You're leaning on it.

And if you keep leaning, eventually you'll fall.

The Human Advantage

The organizations that win with AI won't be the ones that automate the most. They'll be the ones that use AI to make their people more capable, not less.

That means teaching people not just how to use AI, but how to think about it. When to use it. When to step back and do the work themselves. How to evaluate outputs critically. How to preserve the judgment and strategic thinking that makes them irreplaceable.

Because AI can draft the email. But it can't know whether the email should be sent. It can't read the room. It can't build the relationship. It can't make the call that requires experience, intuition, and context.

That's still on you.

And if you outsource it, you're not just losing a skill. You're losing the thing that makes you valuable in the first place.

The more you outsource your thinking, the less you'll be needed. Use AI to amplify your judgment, not replace it.