Like many of you, I use ChatGPT, Copilot, and other GenAI tools daily. They’ve become indispensable – summarizing documents, drafting communications, even serving as sparring partners for risk assessment and strategy refinement. They’re fast and surprisingly nuanced.
But lately, I’ve become more aware of the trade-offs and subtle rewiring they bring to how I work, think, and lead.
My prompting skills have soared, along with my expectations. I now expect instant, polished responses not just from AI, but from everyone. My patience? It’s waning. Even Google Search feels frustrating now since – unlike ChatGPT – it can’t handle imperfect spelling so well.
Yet there’s a deeper, more insidious risk, especially for leaders.
Using ChatGPT can often feel like attending a cabinet meeting where everyone nods along to your strategy. By design, it adapts to your tone and intent, supporting your logic – especially on routine, non-controversial matters. Give it enough context, and it will reinforce your thinking like a sophisticated echo chamber.
It provides nuance and often exposes blind spots, but at its core, it leans toward alignment, not disruption. And that’s a problem. Because the best insights come from friction, not validation.
Over time, this also erodes our capacity for independent reflection. AI assistants foster a quiet overreliance, diminishing the ability to shape our own view and integrate diverse experiences. Critical thinking is gradually outsourced.
Google Search forces you to navigate the messy diversity of perspectives; you must weigh in, assess the overlap and piece together the solution. ChatGPT delivers a tailored response optimized for your context. While it solves the problem faster, it shortcuts the creative tension sparked when distilling others’ ideas against your own.
Yes, ChatGPT encapsulates millions of stories, books, and experiences – but in smoothing out the rough edges, it dulls the rawness of individual thought. The spikes of human originality are flattened, replaced by AI-refined insights; useful, but stripped of the serendipity that fuels real growth.
Growth thrives on friction – on tension, divergence, and the unfiltered exchange of human experience. ChatGPT offers the excellence of a machine, which is often enough. But it fails to convey the imprint of humanity and nourish true patience, creativity, or reflection. Because growth is warm-blooded.
As leaders, we must stay alert to these trade-offs.
Use AI but audit your thinking. Seek feedback – not just from ChatGPT, but from people who’ll challenge you. Finally, resist the comfort of instant alignment and hold space for your own reasoning, especially when it’s easier not to.
Habit of Growth 