Anthropic engineer warns that leaning on AI can dull your thinking

Addy Osmani helps build Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding product. He now says that using AI agents all day has left him with little that forces him to think critically. In an essay on X on a Tuesday, he argued that people must build thinking into their day on purpose, because "by default nothing will do it for you."

Three ways AI can dull thinking

Osmani described three habits. The first is cognitive offloading, which means handing a task to AI while you stay responsible for the result. "I do this all day," he wrote. "You should, too." The second is deferral, where the AI's output becomes your new starting point. The third is cognitive surrender.

Cognitive surrender is a term coined by two researchers at the Wharton School. It means trusting AI answers completely. Osmani called it lazy. Doing it too often, he wrote, builds up "cognitive debt."

Where he draws the line

Osmani does not want people to stop using AI, and he does not want them to think hard about everything. It comes down to how much the task matters. "Where the stakes are low, feel free to delegate entirely," he wrote.

His test for ownership is simple. "When you can't explain the answer to a question, even by way of your agent, you've ceded ownership." Asked about the difference between getting help and offloading, he said both are fine, as long as you know which one you are doing.

Habits he suggests

• Form a guess before you ask the AI. He asks himself, "Did I formulate a hypothesis before asking?"
• Ask yourself, "What am I no longer practicing?"
• Treat checking as a habit, and ask the AI agent what it could verify and what it could not.

For engineers, he said, this means building loops that confirm the code an AI wrote actually works.

Skills fade when unused

Osmani compared it to everyday life. Many people can no longer read a paper map since phone apps took over. Many no longer remember friends' phone numbers because contacts store them. "Skills that you stop exercising are going to go away, and probably faster than you might guess," he wrote. His advice is to keep practicing the ones you are not willing to lose.

What is still unknown

Nobody knows yet whether AI is making people less capable or just changing how they think. Researchers who spoke with Business Insider saw some bad signs but warned against jumping to conclusions. Other engineers have voiced similar worries over the past year, saying AI has turned them more into operators than builders.