Are we becoming too dependent on LLMs?

Another topic I find interesting is how much people are starting to depend on LLMs for their everyday work.

People are using them to write emails, solve programming problems, write assignments, summarise articles, generate ideas, write reports and even make decisions.

The question is what happens to our own skills when we stop practising them.

If we always ask an AI to solve a problem instead of trying to solve it ourselves, we may slowly lose the ability or patience to think through difficult problems. If we always ask an AI to write something for us, we may also get worse at writing ourselves.

There is already a lot of discussion and research around cognitive offloading and how relying on external tools can change the way people think and remember information.

I don't think it is as simple as saying "AI will make humans dumb", because technology has always changed the way humans use their brains. Calculators reduced the need to perform certain calculations manually. Search engines changed the way we find information. GPS changed the way we navigate.

But AI is different because it can now perform tasks that involve writing, reasoning, programming and creating ideas.

So the more interesting question is:

If we outsource more and more of our thinking to machines, which abilities will we stop practising?

And if we stop practising those abilities for a long enough time, what happens to our creativity, problem-solving and ability to think independently?