Lose our ability to write and we lose our ability to think
The temptation to get AI to do our writing for us, may be seriously harming our thinking skills. The latest cognitive science sheds some light.
There’s an exercise that we do at workshops. Business leaders are required to articulate their strategy in the form of a compelling story. They are then required to synthesise this into five sentences; then three; then one.
Having been briefed on the task, Matt, a bright articulate 40 something, asked with a mischievous smile, “Isn’t this where ChatGPT comes in?” It’s a legitimate question – one that has crossed all our minds. Of course, Matt was half joking. Like most of us he intuitively sensed that there is something essential and deeply human in the process of crafting words to express ourselves.
But why? Why not simply reach for ChatGPT rather than do the cognitive grunt work of putting the words together?
The neuroscience backs up this idea
Well, in the words of the influential writer and journalist Joan Didion. “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” The neuroscience backs up this idea. The cognitive processes of idea generation and wordsmithing are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.
So, if we lose our ability to write, do we lose our ability to think? And does repeated use of ChatGPT diminish our ability to write. Alarmingly the answer to both of these questions is ‘yes.’ At least, that’s what the evidence increasingly tells us.
Let’s take them one at a time.
The act of writing through thinking, allows us to parcel ideas into manageable units of thought that can be observed, tested and moved around in relation to one another, until coherence emerges. Put simply, thinking through writing is more powerful than thinking alone. Again, the neuroscience backs this up. The simultaneous activity that occurs in both the planning and the emotion-processing cortices of the brain creates a multiplier effect.
Umberto Eco, TS Elliott, Susan Sontag, and Ezra Pound all explicitly cited the act of writing as being integral to their creative process.
Francis Bacon’s maxim—“reading maketh a full man… writing an exact man”—captures the core claim.
Capability to write
The next question is whether the outsourcing of writing to AI harms our ability to craft words? Well, the evidence suggests that the capability to write is particularly prone to whither if not practised and stretched.
Emerging studies indicate that outsourcing composition to AI can reduce the active mental processes associated with writing. A 2025 MIT/Media Lab experiment using EEG found that participants who drafted essays with a large-language model showed lower neural engagement and produced more formulaic prose than “brain-only” writers. More worryingly, when heavy AI users switched back to unaided writing, their engagement and originality continued to lag significantly.
Ability to express our thoughts
Of course, mankind will inevitably lose certain archaic skills as technology advances. There are far fewer blacksmiths for example since the inception of the internal combustion engine. But the ability to express our thoughts directly through the crafting of words is something quite different.
Putting complex concepts into words requires us to master the detail. Leaders need not only to articulate their strategy, but they also need to answer tough questions and respond to challenges to their thinking, under pressure in the moment. Under those conditions. would you really bank on a leader who has outsourced the word craft to ChatGPT.
In the words of the neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett: “language seeds concepts.” It’s integral to who we are and how we think.
And if we don’t use it, we do lose it.
To find out how we can help leaders in your organisation to be more impactful, influential and persuasive visit www.threshold.co.uk
