We’re letting AI think for us, and that’s more dangerous than you realise

“There were bunnies that were jumping on a trampoline / And I just learnt that they weren’t real.”

That line has been stuck in my head all week.

It comes from a 30-second Tiktok song by Oliver Richman, written in response to an Al-generated clip of rabbits bouncing on a trampoline – a viral clip that has fooled millions.

The video is, of course, fake. But the quiet, unsettling doubt it evokes feels unmistakably real.

Beyond its Bo Burnham-esque melancholy lies something more troubling: a resignation that even our most innocent joys may no longer be trustworthy. If a bot can inhabit the form of a rabbit, it might also manufacture the way someone makes you feel.

In that sense, the song lands as some unintentional anthem for a generation disoriented by unreality. Who wrote this review? Who shot that photo? Is that woman real?

Even while drafting this story, I found myself tempted to turn to ChatGPT for help – an awful irony slightly too sharp to ignore, outsourcing reflection on independent thought to the very thing I’m questioning.

I didn’t come here for clean answers – I came to sharpen the question.

A 2024 Deloitte study on Generative AI (GenAI) adoption found that 86 per cent of students and 67 per cent of employees in Singapore had used GenAI to boost efficiency and creativity. Institutions like NUS are redesigning assessments around its use.

But – at the risk of sounding like I lifted this from the aforementioned engine itself – the danger isn’t just that we think less, it’s that we are told we should. In an economy that rewards speed and certainty, why wrestle with nuance when a prompt can deliver polished prose?

That trade-off is perilous. MIT researchers warn of cognitive offloading: a weakening of critical faculties, especially in adolescents still learning how to think. Reflecting on a 2025 Business Insider article in which Sam Altman declared his own children would “never be smarter than AI,” the cautionary note feels even more urgent today. And in a world that demands we outwit collapse after collapse, we can’t afford to dull the mind.

Without thought, meaningful debate erodes – whether confronting an ageing society or grieving cultural havens like The Projector, lost to profit’s indifference.

I’m not entirely against AI. That would be both hypocritical and short-sighted. I am, however, wary of what it replaces when convenience lulls us into paying less attention.

So when Oliver Richman sings, “I just learned that they weren’t real,” it is both quip and warning. If convenience lulls us into paying less attention, a bot can inhabit an unknowing rabbit – or a journalist, lover or friend.

If we lose the ability to tell the difference between felt and fabricated – or worse, stop caring whether there is one – then what is left is just noise.

In defending thought, we defend not only knowledge, but the very climate that allows meaningful advocacy to thrive. And that means committing – loudly, stubbornly – to the unglamorous work of thinking for ourselves.

A version of this text appeared in the ‘Her Word’ section of the September 2025 issue of Her World magazine.