The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

I've been reflecting on how LLMs are changing our learning habits as engineers, and realized something worrying. AI can now quickly help search and research information, distilling the core of a paper into a concise summary. It lets you pick up a term fast and have something to talk about. But real learning requires deep reading, thinking, and practice. A polished summary is far from enough. Since having AI, how long has it been since you truly studied a paper or deeply read through and implemented a technology? Has your ability to think and your taste improved or declined? Once that ability is weakened, are you ready to let AI replace you entirely? Taste is never built by reading abstracts — it is forged through countless bad decisions and excellent practice. To be honest, most people never seriously finished reading many papers before AI either. AI hasn't taken anything away — it has just made shallow learning more efficient and more deceptive. The real risk isn't that AI makes peopl