The Odyssey Made Me Question: How Much Should We Rely on AI?

When AI Makes Everything Easasier, What Should We Still Do Ourselves?

I spend a lot of time learning AI these days.

In my 50s, I'm back in college studying AI, trying new tools and often thinking:

“Wow. You can do that with AI too?”

Then I went to see Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey with my daughter.

For nearly three hours, I watched an enormous world unfold on the screen. But what stayed with me afterward wasn't only the story.

It was the human effort behind what I had just watched.

And suddenly, I found myself asking a very different question:

“If AI can do so much for me, how much should I still do myself?”

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🎬 Why Did Doing It the Hard Way Feel So Powerful?

So much of that world had been created through real locations, physical sets, practical effects, performers, and painstaking work in front of the camera.

And there I was, someone who spends almost every day discovering ways to make things faster and easier with AI.

I love what AI lets me do. It has helped me learn and attempt things I might once have thought were beyond me.

That's why the contrast bothered me.

Why did watching people do things the hard way feel so powerful?

Maybe because effort leaves something behind that efficiency doesn't always replace.

Not just a finished result, but the experience of getting there.

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🤖 What Am I Losing When AI Makes Things Easier?

I use AI almost every day as a student, and sometimes the help comes almost ridiculously quickly. 😂

But when an answer appears in seconds, it's tempting to skip the messy part—struggling with the problem first.

The wrong attempt. The confusion. The moment when nothing works and I have to try again.

But isn't that part of learning, too?

So maybe the question isn't only:

“What can AI do for me?”

It's also:

“What should I still experience for myself?”

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🧠 Faster Isn't Always the Same as Learning More

I'm studying AI because I want to use it—not avoid it.

Of course I'm going to keep using AI. 😂

But finishing faster and actually understanding are not always the same thing.

If AI fixes every mistake before I understand why it happened, what did I learn?

If it writes before I've formed my own thought, whose thought am I developing?

Maybe getting lost for a while is part of learning, too.

🔗 I've noticed something similar while writing about AI: trying to explain what I learned often shows me what I don't fully understand yet.

The hard part is knowing when to let AI help—and when to struggle a little longer myself.

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✋ For Now, I Have One Small Rule

I haven't solved this. But for now, I have one small rule:

Think first. Ask AI. Then check.

Before I prompt, I try to form my own thought—even if it's incomplete.

Then I use AI. And when the answer matters, I check it.

It's simple, but it keeps me involved in the process.

AI can help me think. I don't want it to think instead of me.

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🌱 The Question I Brought Home

I went to the cinema expecting to watch a movie.

I came home thinking about how I learn.

Maybe that's what stayed with me most: in a world increasingly designed to remove effort, some effort may still be worth keeping.

I'm still figuring out where that line is.

For now:

Use AI to go further.
Just don't let it do all the walking.

Tomorrow, I'll probably open ChatGPT or Gemini again. 😂

But maybe I'll think for a minute before I type. 🌱