The Mechanized Mind: AI’s Hidden Impact on Human Thought

While we’re busy wondering whether machines will ever become conscious, we rarely stop to ask: What happens to us? How does it change us when we realize that even today’s mind-mimicking “weak AI” can already take over cognitive tasks and abilities we once thought were exclusively human?

As smart machines and robots take over more of our thinking, the brain risks becoming lazy, unstimulated, and, frankly, bored. In a world where work and struggle are things of the past, our experiences might dwindle to nothing more than a search for entertainment and pleasure — a cycle of reacting to one shiny distraction after another. When we hit

Krishnamurti also questioned whether thought, in its inherently mechanical nature, could ever produce real intelligence. After all, if our thinking operates like a machine, can it truly be called intelligent?

For Krishnamurti, AI demands a fresh look at intelligence itself. If we agree that true intelligence can’t be mechanical, then maybe it’s time to define intelligence as something beyond what any computer could imitate or simulate.

For Krishnamurti, mind and mechanical thought are worlds apart. And when he talks about exercising the brain, he’s not referring to crossword puzzles or sudoku. He’s pointing to a human mind with an immense, even infinite capacity — one that remains unknown as long as it’s bogged down by knowledge, specialization, and material concerns.

Krishnamurti turns Alan Turing’s famous ‘imitation game’ on its head. In his 1950 paper, Turing proposed a thought experiment to see whether a machine could mimic human verbal behavior by responding meaningfully to whatever is asked. Picture it: a woman and a computer, each hidden away in separate rooms, while a human judge, unaware of who’s where,

In an AI-ruled world, any human ability we neglect will start to shrivel up.

Resist the lure of the entertained mind and keep your mental gears turning by diving into the “vast recesses of one’s being.”

If machines can rapidly weave together complex ideas from diverse schools of thought to uncover conceptual connections, would this type of academic activity still be deemed intelligent, and will the knowledge we’re boasting to have — our prideful capacity to activate our brain’s net of associations and comparisons — retain any significance?

Instead of asking whether machines will ever become conscious, we might ask whether humans can become conscious enough to outgrow the “artificial intelligence” both inside them and in the machines around them.