how to not lose your mind in 2025 🧠

We got it wrong.

The real threat of AI isn’t stealing our jobs or sentience (although, you know, stay vigilant about the latter).

It’s about humans losing the very essence of what makes us human: our ability to think independently, creatively, and critically.

AI was supposed to make us more efficient and productive, but instead we lost our minds—literally.

From using LLMs to generate university papers, to candidates using AI assistants to write real-time scripts for their job interviews (don’t do this, we can always tell), if we really wanted to, we could go an entire day without having to think at all. Yikes.

We’re essentially running toward a future where we are inarguably dumber than the robots we created. Spine-chilling, isn’t it?

If you’re reading this and thinking, “we are deeply fucked,” hold your despair. There are some glimmers of hope we should hold onto with an ironclad grip.

Criticism of generative AI is growing. Just last month a software developer went viral on Reddit for boasting about firing his entire engineering team and replacing them with AI, only to make a LinkedIn post looking for web developers.

Publishers who replaced writers with AI generated content are realizing that nothing compares to content written by a human, resulting in a growing demand for quality human produced content.

But what’s truly revolutionary isn’t even the AI tools themselves, it’s knowing how to use them to expand our knowledge and grow our careers.

This begins by auditing your AI use. Look at your recent query history and ask yourself: Where am I letting AI think for me? How much time do I spend fact-checking and editing output? Am I automating more than just the mundane tasks?

Trust your gut, too. There’s a reason why using your big, beautiful human brain feels more satisfying. How do you feel when you outsource different tasks to AI?

Then use AI to level up your career:

Identify Your Existing Areas of Expertise

Leverage AI to help you be more efficient. Offload the more tedious and monotonous tasks by using AI automation tools like Tableau to analyze and make sense of data, or Zapier to automate workflows.

Build Upon Your Existing Skills

Maybe you’re a solid writer,  but your SEO could use some work. Tools like Jasper can help analyze your content and optimize it. With these skills, AI can help you become an expert—not do the work for you (do I sound like a broken record yet?).

Develop New Competencies

When you identify what skills to improve, AI can help build a foundation of understanding. It can help to simplify jargon and concepts, find resources, and provide feedback. If you’re unsure where to start, research industry trends, look at what your peers are talking about on LinkedIn, or just straight up ask your manager.

While everyone else uses AI to think for them, you’ll be using it to get smarter and more agile.

That sounds like a pretty damn good way to get ahead to me.

- Ines Andersen

Social and Content at Growclass

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