Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is the gateway that leads to the death of critical thinking.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, with experts predicting that it could reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) and eventually artificial superintelligence (ASI), which could surpass human capabilities. —Devikoa Rao, The Week

AGI is where General Intelligence is considered Human-Level Artificial Intelligence (HLAI).

Why promote building a human level AI system unless the purpose is to eliminate human intelligence?  

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/noname_13-2364555/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1903774">NoName_13</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1903774">Pixabay</a>There have been numerous proofs for this fact, but people are already no longer thinking.  

Here are but a few examples going back in time when AI was first raised as a concern, and which are now considered obsolete:

  1. A 2025 study: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use.
  2. A 2022 study concluded smartphone use among students produced a negative effect on student math performance, a subject with high cognitive demands.
  3. A 2017 study linked Smartphone to reduced cognition, addiction, attention difficulties (shorter attention spans), etc.
  4. In a 2005 study, behavioral concerns are documented. 

If we do not know what it means to be fully human, then AI, AGI, or ASI will answer it for us. 

Fake Art

Today, using an AI assistant for writing tasks is the new normal. We don’t know, or seem to care, if the author of the latest Best Seller is human or not. When it comes to human authors will AI replace them all

Recently, the band Velvet Sundown, purported to have “come out of nowhere,” was identified as a fully AI. All the attention given to this fake band gave the illusion of authenticity. Despite their lack of history, the music platform did not disclose that they were AI-generated. 

One would have to go back to 1989 to report the first obvious fakery in music with the band Milli Vinilli, caught live, on stage, lip-synching, which earlier was known as “miming” by artists such as Eddie Cochran in the 1950s, Beatles in 1963, Michael Jackson, and many others.

Fake art used to be called forgery—a copy, a replica, or misattributed work. Today, the distinction between “real” and “fake,” AI-generated art is more difficult to discern, especially when the original creator is not human. 

The Death of Humor 

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop laughing. —Michael Pritchard

For centuries, humor has been known to be healing. Laughter is the best medicine. To have humor is to be human. Laughter is known to help with loneliness, cognitive flexibility, reduces stress hormones, to produce a positive mental well-being. With the entrance of AI, there are fewer people laughing.

If there is one thing AI cannot do, it is to be funny!  

In a world without the funnies, people may develop uncontrolled laughter or inappropriate laughing to compensate. According to allopathic medicine, there is a drug for the newly diagnosable neurological condition called PBA (Pseudobulbar Affect)- the tendency for uncontrolled laughing. However, note the side effects: can cause immune-mediated thrombocytopenia that can be severe or fatal. Non-specific symptoms, such as lightheadedness, chills, fever, nausea, and vomiting, can precede or occur with thrombocytopenia.

According to the World Happiness Report 2021, “COVID-19 has had unprecedented impacts on world emotions.” In 2021, the rate of suicide attempts by intentional medication overdose increased by 30% compared to 2019. 

However, is COVID-19 to blame, or A.I.?  It is no laughing matter that A.I. can generate the idea that more people are laughing, (emojis) when the opposite may be true. Thanks to Deep Fakes, people accept what they find on the Internet as true, increasing the spread of misinformation. 

The fact is that A.I. learns from humans; “machine learning.” Once machines crack the code of human laughter to master “humor” will it be redefined to something else?

Is the joke on us?  

The Remedy for Critical Thinking

In 1923, anthroposophist, Rudolf Steiner, often spoke (over 6000 lectures) about the importance of critical thinking. He said, “our own thinking must be clear if right thinking is to develop.”  

Steiner understood the necessity of technology in human evolution and that we must walk the road of technological innovation. However, he also understood that we cannot be dictated by its products. He called modern technology “demon magic” and warned of its dangers, “The black magician wants to weaken or eliminate … critical thinking…, so that his suggestions may operate unhampered. A person prepared in this way then falls prey to the seducer at the first personal encounter.” 

Steiner cautioned that “abstract thinking” is programmed as an attack on the human soul force as thoughts become more and more real. 

In response to a growing decline in critical thinking, Steiner introduced, spiritual science, to build a bridge between the natural sciences and what his own spiritual insight revealed as “the other side of reality.” He stated, “spiritual science wants to be a continuation of the scientific way of thinking in the most eminent sense, but since it deals with the spiritual realm, it must overcome this scientific way of thinking.”

The journal Psychology Today acknowledges The Decline of Critical Thinking Skills, with its own list of thought-based solutions.  Without critical thinking, humanity will become more divided because the death of critical thinking is the death of rationality