“We Are Watching Critical Thinking Disappear in Real Time” Due to AI Addiction: 40% of Kids Can’t Read, Teachers Quitting in Droves
Normally I am loath to have a video as a cross post, but I suspect most of you will agree that this one merits being showcased. It describes the extent and severity of the collapse in critical thinking skills and even basic information acquisition among most children due to device dependence and AI addiction. Teachers are resigning in droves.
The narrator in passing wonders what sort of society is coming, since a minority of children, those of the affluent and above all, the progeny of the tech elite, are being brought in a more traditional way, with no or limited device use until their teens, to acquire fashioned cognitive skills. But what of the rest of the dull eaters? What role if any will be allotted to them?
A conservative colleague said the use of AI to create addiction and device dependency was evil. That is an understatement. These kids rely on ChatGPT not just for information but also to make choices, and for many, that seems to extend to every aspect of their lives. Sam Altman makes clear in video clips below that this extreme loss of independence, of personal autonomy, is deliberate.
That means unless these kids can find a way to break free, they are cognitive serfs that can be told to do anything. How to vote. Whether to sign up to die in a hopeless war. Whether to take a job in a unsafe meatpacking plant and risk loss of limbs.
This widespread abuse is far worse than what the Sacklers and other opioid peddlers did to mainly working class pain victims, or what the British did to China in the Opium Wars. At least with opioid addiction, it is possible for the victims to recover even if the withdrawal process is painful. The evidence is mounting that even for adults, regular use of AI diminishes reasoning skills and attention spans.
These children are being turned into automatons, incapable of independent thought and action. It’s widely known in developmental psychology that if certain patterning does not happen at critical ages, the deficit is permanent. Kittens needing visual input in their first few days or they are blind. Kids who don’t crawl having coordination issues as adults due to missing important movement patterning. Less dramatic versions are not being able to make sounds in foreign languages if you have not heard and practiced them when young.
These young AI addicts are set to be permanently damaged. This is tech bros creating something as permanent and harmful as fetal alcohol syndrome on a mass basis. And they clearly know what they are doing, witness how they raise their children on completely different lines.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/we-are-watching-critical-thinking-disappear-in-real-time-due-to-ai-addiction-40-of-kids-cant-read-teachers-quitting-in-droves.html