Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose whether to be the passengers or pilots of our lives.

We’re drawn to activities that invite us to grow, by trying and trying again, because we want to evolve as people. Life is mostly repetitive—wake, eat, work, sleep, repeat—and each day can feel like an unsatisfying circle. But repetition with variation broadens us. It makes our circular days into spiralling journeys. “The spiral is a spiritualized circle,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote, in “Speak, Memory.” “In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.” This way of being, for which we don’t even have a name, is part of what makes us feel that we’re really living our lives instead of just going through the motions.

We’re so used to trying things for ourselves that it seems bizarre to imagine us ever stopping. And yet, more and more, it’s becoming clear that artificial intelligence can relieve us of the burden of trying and trying again.

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It feels strange to imagine that, someday soon, we might need to start reminding ourselves to think. But that’s what artificial intelligence does—it thinks—and, in many contexts, promises to do the thinking for us. In a world saturated with technology, we already have to remind ourselves to put down our phones; to go outside; to see friends in person; to go places instead of staring at them on our screens; to have non-technological experiences, such as boredom. If we’re not careful, then our minds will do less as computers do more, and we will be diminished as a result. –Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker