The other day, I was working with a product manager on a project. We were discussing a product challenge and I shared a proposal.

Her response was simple:
“I’ll check with AI and get back to you.”

That sentence stayed with me longer than it should have. Not because it was wrong. I do the same thing. Every day.

But because it triggered a quiet question I couldn’t ignore: When did verification replace thinking?

Delegating the first thought

I use AI constantly. The famous chat it’s one of the most used apps on my phone.

I ask it to draft messages, organize ideas, clean up arguments, summarize problems, plan tasks, even diagnose things I probably shouldn’t Google at night.

“Write a firm but polite message asking a client to pay an overdue invoice.”
“How do I clean this pan?” (photo attached, problem solved).
“I’ve had headaches for a week. Should I worry?”

AI has become the place where half-formed thoughts go to become finished.

And that’s convenient. Almost too convenient.

The illusion of certainty

AI doesn’t just answer. It confirms.

It gives structure, tone, and confidence to ideas that were still fragile. And that confirmation carries weight. Sometimes more weight than our own judgment.

That’s what surprised me in that meeting. Not that AI was consulted — but that its validation seemed necessary before forming an opinion.

As if reasoning alone wasn’t enough anymore.

José Saramago once warned about a dangerous kind of illiteracy: people who can read, but don’t understand what they read.

Today, I wonder if we’re creating something adjacent to that.
People who can think — but don’t fully trust their own thinking.

Products reflect how we think

Digital products have always mirrored society.

They reflect what we value, what we optimize for, and what we try to avoid. From entertainment to work, from finance to communication.

Now, they’re starting to reflect something else: our relationship with reasoning itself.

If AI becomes the default layer between us and decision-making, what are we designing for? Speed? Convenience? Or the gradual erosion of judgment?

This isn’t an anti-AI argument. It’s a design question.

Designing with AI, not instead of thinking

Every technological revolution has arrived before we were ready. Smartphones changed how we communicate. AI is changing how we reason.

The challenge isn’t adoption. That part is already done.

The challenge is intentionality.

As designers and product builders, we need to decide where AI supports thinking — and where it replaces it. Where it accelerates understanding — and where it quietly removes friction that was actually useful.

Some friction is bad UX.
Some friction is how we think.

A quiet responsibility

I’m not outside this system. I’m part of it.

I rely on AI. I benefit from it. And I also feel how easy it is to stop wrestling with ideas once something else can do it faster.

That’s why this matters to me as a product designer.

If we’re shaping tools for people who think less, or differently, or not at all — that choice will show up in the products we build.

The question isn’t whether AI will think for us. It’s whether we still want to think alongside it.