AI can write, think and create; then why should people learn new skills? Psychologists identify a serious problem that automation creates in human mind

AI was supposed to make work easier and for many employees, it has. But there is a strange side effect emerging alongside that convenience, some people are starting to wonder whether there is any point in learning at all. A Reddit post from a backend developer with 3.5 years of experience has captured that anxiety. The developer said that a few years ago, learning Java, Spring Boot, AWS, microservices, Docker, Kubernetes and even React felt exciting. Now, with AI handling much of the actual coding, that motivation has largely disappeared.

“In my current job to be brutally honest, AI generated most of the code, I don't manually code, I review code but if deadlines are near I don't do that even. I totally lost the art of writing code,” the developer wrote.

The concern is bigger than coding. If AI can keep taking over more tasks, what happens to the skills humans stop practising?

Psychology says the problem may not be AI itself

The American Psychological Association (APA), in its discussion of AI, cognition and skill development, points to a concept called cognitive offloading. People have always used external tools to reduce mental effort, whether it is storing phone numbers, using reminders or relying on GPS.

The difference with generative AI is that it can now take over tasks that involve thinking, judging, creating and solving problems.

“There’s clear evidence that people can perform many tasks better with AI. The question is: What happens to our skills if we start relying on it regularly?” said Brooke Macnamara, an associate professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University.

Research cited by the APA suggests that skills can weaken when they are regularly offloaded. GPS, for example, has been linked with a weaker ability to navigate without assistance. Similar concerns are now being examined with AI.

Reddit users describe the same fear

The discussion among software developers shows how this can feel in everyday working life.

One developer said, “The biggest problem is that I realise I am not learning much. And every day I am becoming more and more incompetent/incapable.”

Another Reddit user summed up the frustration more simply: “Every day feels like just giving prompts instead of actually building things. AI is moving so fast, it’s hard to stay excited.”

There is also an uncomfortable mismatch in hiring. Developers in the discussion said companies may encourage employees to use AI at work but still test them on coding syntax, Java and Spring Boot internals, DSA and system design during interviews.

At the same time, some developers argued that the answer is not to avoid AI. One suggested building things from scratch without AI while also learning how to build with agentic AI, RAG and MCP.

Passive AI use could make learning weaker

The APA cited research involving 319 knowledge workers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University in which people who had greater confidence in generative AI reported doing less critical thinking while using it for work.

Another study found that people using AI for research spent less time searching and produced shorter summaries. Readers also considered their advice less helpful and trustworthy than advice produced after traditional internet research.

Mutlu Cukurova, a professor of learning and artificial intelligence at University College London, described the risk this way: “Unfortunately, these types of interactions are more likely to lead to cognitive atrophy than cognitive development.”

But that does not mean using AI automatically makes people less capable.

Psychologists say how you use AI matters

Research cited by the APA also found that structured AI use can produce better results. In one experiment, people who were encouraged to think independently, research, construct an argument and then use ChatGPT for feedback produced essays that received higher expert scores.

MIT researcher Jackson G. Lu said, “The key issue is not whether but how AI is used. The difference lies less in the technology itself and more in the user.”

That may be the more important lesson for workers worried about upskilling. AI can remove some of the boring work, but the time saved has to go somewhere.

Microsoft social psychologist David Evans said, “It comes down to how we use the extra time that AI gives us.”

The danger, according to the psychology research, is spending that extra time simply producing more output. The opportunity is using it to learn something AI cannot simply hand back when asked.

As Nita Farahany, a professor at Duke University, put it: “What happens when we start to go into passive mode of receiving rather than generating is that our overall competence starts to erode.”

For workers, then, the question may no longer be whether AI will change the skills they need. It is whether they will keep actively developing those skills while using AI, instead of allowing the technology to do all the thinking for them.