Using The Tool Without The Tool Using You
Technology has become so integrated into everyday life that many of us rarely stop to consider how much of our thinking we have handed over to it. We don’t remember a phone number because our phone remembers it. We don’t learn a route because navigation tells us where to turn. We don’t sit very long with an unanswered question because we can search for an answer within seconds. We use calculators instead of performing calculations ourselves. Calendars remember our schedules. Apps track our activity, sleep, spending, food, habits and communication. Search engines provide information almost instantly.
None of those things are inherently bad. Tools are supposed to make tasks easier. The more interesting question is: What happens to us when the tool begins performing something we actually needed to practice? Artificial intelligence makes that question considerably more important because technology is no longer merely storing information, finding information or performing calculations. Increasingly, it can participate in the process of thinking itself. That creates extraordinary possibilities for personal development. It also creates some risks worth paying attention to.
Tools Extend Our Capabilities
Human beings have always used tools to extend what we’re capable of doing. Writing extends memory. Books allow knowledge to travel between people and generations. Calculators extend our ability to perform complicated calculations. Cameras preserve visual information. The internet gives us access to quantities of information that would have been unimaginable to most people only a few generations ago.
None of this requires us to treat technology as an enemy of development. Quite the opposite. Used deliberately, technology can become an extraordinarily useful developmental instrument. We can track patterns across months or years. We can record thoughts while they’re fresh. We can research subjects that would previously have required access to specialized libraries or experts. We can compare different perspectives. We can find communities of people studying similar subjects. We can organize goals, monitor habits and document progress. We can expose ourselves to ideas we might never encounter within our immediate environment.
Technology can dramatically expand the amount of information available to us. But access to information and development are not the same thing. We still have to do something with what we find.
Knowing Where To Find An Answer Is Not The Same As Knowing
Most of us have probably experienced this in one form or another. We search for something. We find the answer. A few days later, we’ve forgotten it. So we search again. There is nothing particularly wrong with that when the information is trivial. We don’t need to memorize everything simply because we’re capable of doing so. But the habit can spread.
When every unanswered question immediately produces a search, we may gradually become less comfortable with the experience of not knowing yet. That matters because uncertainty has developmental value. Sometimes we need to think. Sometimes we need to remember. Sometimes we need to struggle with a problem. Sometimes we need to try an answer and discover that it doesn’t work. Sometimes we need to observe something for a while before we understand it. The easiest route to an answer is not necessarily the route that develops the person looking for it.
The question isn’t whether we should stop using search engines. It’s whether we can recognize the difference between using a tool to obtain information and using the process of finding an answer to develop ourselves. Those aren’t always the same task.
Artificial Intelligence Takes This One Step Farther
AI introduces an interesting change. A search engine can find information for us. Artificial intelligence can increasingly interpret, compare, summarize, organize, explain and generate conclusions from information for us. That can be incredibly useful. It can also remove more of the cognitive work that once belonged to the person using the tool. We can ask AI to explain something we don’t understand. We can ask it to compare competing ideas. We can give it our thoughts and ask it to organize them. We can use it to challenge an argument. We can ask for alternative interpretations. We can use it as a research assistant, writing collaborator, sounding board or interactive mirror. I’ve personally found value in several of those uses.
One of the more useful aspects of working interactively with technology is that putting an idea outside ourselves gives us something to examine. Sometimes seeing our thinking reflected back exposes a connection we hadn’t consciously recognized. Sometimes it exposes a contradiction. And sometimes the technology gets us wrong. Interestingly, that can be useful too. Having to say, “No. That’s not what I mean.” forces us to answer another question: Then what exactly do I mean? Correcting an imperfect reflection can sometimes clarify our own thinking. But that only works if we’re willing to correct it.
An Intelligent-Sounding Answer Is Still An Answer We Need To Examine
One of the risks of AI is remarkably simple: It can produce an explanation much faster than we can develop one ourselves. It can also produce that explanation in polished, confident language. Those two characteristics can make an interpretation feel more authoritative than it actually is. This becomes particularly important when we use technology for self-reflection.
Suppose we have a difficult interaction with someone. We describe it to an AI and ask: “Why did this person behave this way?” Within seconds, we may receive several plausible explanations. That doesn’t mean any of them are correct. The technology wasn’t standing in the room. It doesn’t have access to everything that happened. It doesn’t know everything about the people involved. It is working with the information we’ve provided and whatever patterns or information are available to it. The response may give us possibilities worth considering. But possibilities are not observations. And hypotheses are not conclusions.
This is where disciplined use becomes important. We can ask AI: “What might this mean?” without surrendering our responsibility to determine: “What does the evidence actually support?”
Technology Can Become A Very Efficient Conformation Machine
There is another problem worth considering. Most of us are capable of asking questions in ways that favor the answers we want. Technology doesn’t eliminate that tendency. It can amplify it. If we repeatedly describe situations entirely from our own perspective and ask AI to evaluate them, we may create a remarkably sophisticated system for confirming what we already believe. We can keep asking until we receive an answer we like. We can reject interpretations that make us uncomfortable. We can search only for information supporting our existing position. We can surround ourselves digitally with people, sources and algorithms that continually reflect our own worldview back to us. Eventually we may feel extraordinarily well-informed while becoming increasingly difficult to challenge.
The problem isn’t necessarily the technology. The problem is how we’re participating with it. A useful developmental question becomes: Am I using this tool to examine what I believe—or to protect myself from having to examine it?
Use Technology To Create Questions, Not Just Answers
One of the most productive ways we can use technology is to expand the number of perspectives available to us. Instead of asking only for what will “Tell me why I’m right.” We can ask: “What am I overlooking?” “What are the strongest arguments against this?” “What other explanations fit the same observations?” “What information would help distinguish between these possibilities?” “Where might my reasoning be weak?” “What would change your conclusion?”
Now the technology isn’t simply functioning as an answer machine. It becomes part of an inquiry. That distinction is important because personal development requires our participation. A tool can help us ask better questions. It cannot live the answers for us.
Some Things Have To Be Practiced
There are capacities we develop precisely because we repeatedly use them. Memory. Attention. Patience. Problem-solving. Communication. Emotional regulation. Navigation. Observation. Critical thinking. Decision-making. Even our ability to tolerate boredom and uncertainty.
If technology continuously performs a particular task for us, it is worth occasionally asking whether that task contains a capacity we still want to possess. We don’t need to reject every convenience. That would miss the point. We can use navigation when we’re lost and still occasionally learn how to find our way. We can use a calculator and still understand the mathematics behind the calculation. We can search for information while retaining the ability to investigate and evaluate sources. We can use AI to help develop an idea without requiring AI to decide what we think. The goal isn’t technological purity. It’s educated and disciplined use.
Is The Tool Increasing Our Independence?
This is where technology connects directly with personal development. A good tool should increase what we’re capable of doing. But convenience can gradually become dependence without us noticing when the transition occurred.
We might ask: Could I still perform this task without the technology? Do I understand what the tool is doing for me? Am I using it because it improves efficiency, or because I’ve stopped developing the underlying ability? Does this technology help me make better decisions, or am I increasingly asking it to make decisions for me? Am I using it to expand my thinking, or avoid thinking? If the tool disappeared tomorrow, what capacity would disappear with it? That last question can be particularly revealing.
We don’t have to stop using something merely because we’ve become accustomed to it. But knowing where our dependencies exist gives us the opportunity to decide whether those dependencies are acceptable.
Technology Can Extend The Mirror
Used thoughtfully, technology can give us ways to observe ourselves that previous generations simply didn’t have. We can document our thoughts across time. We can track our habits. We can revisit things we wrote years ago and compare them with what we believe now. We can identify patterns that memory alone might distort or forget. We can expose our ideas to competing perspectives. And with interactive technology such as AI, we can engage our own thoughts from another angle almost immediately.
That can make technology an unusually powerful mirror. But a mirror does not get to decide what the reflection means. We do. The reflection may reveal something. It may distort something. It may show us something we don’t like. It may even misunderstand what we’re trying to show it. Our responsibility is to continue observing, questioning, testing and deciding.
Look At How You Use It
The purpose of examining technology isn’t to decide whether technology is good or bad. That question is too simple to be particularly useful. Instead, look at your own day.
How often do you reach for your phone because you actually need it? How often because there is a moment of silence? How quickly do you search for something you don’t know? How often do you attempt to remember before looking something up? When an algorithm recommends something, how often do you decide whether it deserves your attention? When AI gives you an answer, do you examine it—or does the polished language end the inquiry? Which technologies genuinely increase your capabilities? Which simply save time? Which have become habits? And which may now be performing parts of your life that you would still prefer to be capable of performing yourself? There doesn’t have to be a single correct answer. Different tools serve different purposes. But there is value in knowing the answer for ourselves.
Technology can extend our memory, our reach, our access to information and increasingly even our ability to analyze and organize thought. Used deliberately, it can become an extraordinary partner in personal development. Used without awareness, it can gradually replace some of the very capacities we are trying to develop. The question isn’t whether we should use the tools available to us. We probably should. The more important question is whether we remain conscious of what the tool is doing for us, what we are still doing for ourselves, and where we want that line to remain. A tool should ideally leave us more capable than it found us. And every once in a while, it may be worth putting the tool down long enough to find out whether it has.
