The other day I was chatting with a mate who’s creeping up on her 40th birthday.

She laughed and said “Chadd… I’m not sure if I’m just becoming more intolerant as I get older… or if people are actually becoming more incompetent.”

I told her it’s probably a bit of both. (Although, in my experience, your forties are when your nonsense radar really kicks into gear.) But then I thought about it. Maybe it’s not that people have suddenly lost the plot. Maybe it’s the tools we’re using. Think about it – with AI now, you don’t need to remember anything. You don’t have to figure things out, plan ahead, or even think…. One quick prompt and you’ve got your answer. That’s brilliant in so many ways. It saves time. It speeds up decisions. It gives you access to knowledge you’d never have found on your own.

But here’s the problem – the more we hand over the thinking, the less we actually do ourselves. And over time, that takes a toll. There’s research now showing that when we outsource too much mental effort, the brain starts to change physically. The pathways and connections you use less often literally weaken. It’s like a muscle – stop using it and it slowly shrinks… And that could explain why so many people seem less capable at solving problems on their own. If every little question, idea, or decision is outsourced to a machine, we don’t build the resilience or creativity that comes from wrestling with a problem until we crack it. It’s a bit like when sat navs first came in. They’re great… until the signal drops and suddenly you’ve got no idea where you are, or how to get home, because you’ve stopped paying attention to the roads altogether.

Freight’s no different. The tech is amazing – it tracks containers across the world in real time, predicts ETAs, flags delays… But if that system goes down and you don’t know how to pick up the phone, talk to a port, or chase a driver manually, you’re stuck… 

So what’s the lesson here?  AI is a tool, not a replacement for thinking. Use it to enhance your skills, not replace them. Because when the unexpected happens – and it will – it’s still your brain that’ll get you out of trouble.

So what do you reckon – is AI making us sharper by giving us more time to think… or slowly making us more incompetent by doing the thinking for us?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…