Polite language is part of the problem. Because I’m noticing something everywhere, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it: people are becoming less willing to think, less able to speak fully, less patient, and strangely uncomfortable with the normal ups and downs of being human.
And yes, artificial intelligence (AI) is not the only cause, but it is accelerating tendencies we were already flirting with.
That should concern us more than it does.
The death of a full sentence
People still talk, obviously. We text, post, comment, react, voice-note, caption, and narrate our lunches. But increasingly, many do not express themselves so much as gesture toward expression with fragments, half-thoughts, and emotion without articulation.
Instead of explaining what they mean, I’ve noticed people increasingly expect others — or machines — to infer it, complete it, optimize it, polish it, and hand it back cleaner than it arrived. Language used to be something we practiced. Now, many treat it like a rough draft someone else should finish. And when language weakens, thought often follows it.
Ask before thinking
There was a time when not knowing something created a pause. You wondered, you guessed, you looked it up. Might’ve even sat with the uncertainty for a minute and let your mind move around the question.
Now, many encounter the smallest gap in knowledge and immediately outsource it. What should I say? What should I eat? What does this mean? How do I feel? What career fits me? What text should I send? What opinion should I have? Tools are useful. Advice is useful. Assistance is useful. But there is a difference between using help and replacing yourself with it.
Impatience is becoming a personality trait
I’ve noticed everything now must be instant, summarized, sped up, translated into bullets, and simplified. People don’t want to read the article anymore; they want the recap, they want the answer, they want certainty in under ten seconds.
And the more tools train us to receive immediate responses, the more ordinary human timing starts to feel offensive. We might just be becoming less tolerant of the pace required for actual learning and understanding.
Friction is not failure
Thinking is often slow. Writing is messy. Conversation can be awkward. Learning is repetitive. Memory takes effort. Good judgment usually forms through trial, embarrassment, revision, and time. It’s how many valuable things come to be. But when we grow accustomed to systems that instantly soothe every rough edge, ordinary mental effort begins to feel like a malfunction. We are forgetting that discomfort is often the entrance fee to growth.
Let me be clear: tools can be brilliant. AI can be helpful and efficient. The issue is not using these tools; the issue is becoming tool-shaped.
Amongst all this inevitable change, I hope we keep our depth.
— Montse
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