AI and Brain Plasticity

I wanna talk about something and it is freaking me out, And actually I've been thinking about this the entirety of 2025

I started learning software development second year of college 2022, so I’m still pretty new to all of this, and around mid-2024, when I started getting more involved in the tech community, I began noticing something that honestly freaked me out. At first, I thought it was just me overthinking things, like some kind of conspiracy theory. BUT nevertheless AI was everywhere,

and something about it just felt… off. Not because AI is bad by itself, but because of how people were using it. And what made it worse is that nobody around me seemed concerned. Everyone was just excited, moving fast, building things, and I’m sitting there like wwaaiitttt, are we sure this is okay?

But then, people like

Hank Green,

Theo,

NeetCode

and others

Started talking about it And that kind of snapped me out of that “maybe I’m crazy” feeling. Like okay this is real. This is something worth talking about.

So here’s the thing that’s been bothering me the most: I’ve started using AI less. Not because I hate it I don’t. It’s powerful, it’s useful. But I noticed something about how it affects me when I’m learning. It’s the same reason I don’t like relying too much on speech-to-text algorithms or all of these tools that just do the thing for you. when you don’t actually know how to do it yourself, and you’re just getting the answer, you’re kind of tricking yourself into feeling smart. But you’re not really learning. You’re outsourcing learning.

And I get it. Learning is uncomfortable. Especially in the beginning. You feel slow, confused, sometimes even stupid. You sit there staring at something that makes no sense, and it sucks. Nobody enjoys that feeling. But that’s literally where learning happens. That struggle is what forces your brain to build connections. When you finally understand something after struggling with it, that little dopamine hit you get actually means something.this is how your brain build lasting knowledge.

With AI, it’s different. You ask a question, you get an answer right away . And a lot of the time, it’s not deep it’s just enough to move on. But your brain still gives you that same feeling, like “oh, I get it now.” Except… you don’t. Not really. It’s surface-level knowledge, but it feels like real understanding. And that’s the scary part. You’re getting rewarded without doing the actual work.

And this is where the brain plasticity thing comes in. From what I understand, your brain has this ability to adapt and form new connections it’s called neuroplasticity. When you’re younger, it’s a lot easier to build those connections. You can pick up new skills faster, your brain is more flexible. But as you get older around 24 or 25 it doesn’t stop, but it does slow down. Learning new things, especially from scratch, becomes harder. It takes more effort, more repetition, more time.

So if you spend your early learning years relying on shortcuts, avoiding the struggle, and not really building deep understanding, you’re basically missing the window where it’s easiest to learn properly. And later on, when things get harder, you won’t have that strong foundation to fall back on.

That’s what really scares me. Not AI itself but what it’s doing to how people learn. I’m worried we’re heading toward a future where the internet is full of people who can get answers, but don’t truly understand anything. Everything becomes shallow. Fast. Disposable. And nobody goes deep anymore.

And I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’ve been “learning” for years, but I can’t actually think through a problem on my own. That’s why I’ve been trying to be more careful with how I use AI. Not avoiding it completely but not letting it replace the hard parts the parts where i feel stupid.

Because at the end of the day, the hard part is the point.

Feeling dumb and stupid isn’t something to avoid.

It’s the price of actually getting better.