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How AI is making us more productive and dumber at the same time

Federal copyright ruling on AI art, GPT-4.5 report on hallucinations, Italian newspaper publishes all AI issue.

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Everyday AI
March 21, 2025

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Outsmart The Future

Today in Everyday AI
7 minute read

🎙 Daily Podcast Episode: AI makes us more productive, but it can make us dumber, too. Yikes. Go listen.

🕵️‍♂️ Fresh Finds: Inside Google's chase of OpenAI, Sam Altman's advice to young workers, a new AI image tool from MIT and more. Read on for Fresh Finds.

đź—ž Byte Sized Daily AI News: AI catching up with human intelligence, Yahoo hoping for an AI-powered comeback, Oracle releases AI agents. Read on for Byte Sized News.

🧠 Leverage AI: So you wanna use LLMs as much as possible yet keep your brain power? Here’s your guide, from a leader at Notion. Keep reading for that!

↩️ Don’t miss out: Did you miss our last newsletter? We talked about OpenAI dropping impressive audio models, Claude FINALLY gets web access, Perplexity seeks $1 billion funding and more. Check it here!

How AI is Making Us More Productive and Dumber at the Same Time

You're outsourcing your brain to AI 🧠.

Bad idea?

AI can write your SQL queries. Build your dashboards. Even brainstorm your next big idea.

It’s saving you hours. Maybe days.

But here’s the catch—it's also stealing your critical thinking. Making you reliant.

Maybe even... dumber.

Sumit Gupta knows this first-hand. He’s built data strategies at Notion, Snowflake, and Dropbox.

And, he’s here to break down how AI is both supercharging productivity and quietly eroding our problem-solving skills.

Are we trading our brains for convenience?

Let’s find out.

Also on the pod today:

How AI can cost more than brainpower đź’¸
Studies that show cognitive decline 🧠
How to stay sharp in an AI-first world 🦾

It’ll be worth your 37 minutes:

Listen on our site:

Click to listen

Subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast platform

Listen on:

Here’s our favorite AI finds from across the web:

New AI Tool Spotlight –  SupaMetas helps you up your RAG game, Intelswift is an AI agents marketplace, Strella uses AI to give you faster insights and clips from videos.

Tech Titans — This Wired article takes an inside look at Google’s journey to catch OpenAI and ChatGPT.

AI Updates — Google has updated its Gemini image generation capabilities:

Federal Government – Federal workers weren’t amused with the government’s AI demos.


Gen Z’s Career – Sam Altman says mastering AI tools is Gen Z’s ticket to tech success, with companies offering seven-figure salaries for top talent. How to get it done.

AI Images — MIT and NVIDIA's new AI tool, HART, generates high-quality images 9x faster using less energy—perfect for laptops or smartphones. Here’s how it works.

AI Copyright – AI has a HUGE pirated books problem. What will happen?

AI and the Stock Market — Micron's revenue forecast surpasses expectations as booming AI demand drives record sales of its high-bandwidth memory chips.

1. OpenAI Pricey o1-Pro Model in API Getting Mixed Reviews 🤑

OpenAI has rolled out the o1-pro, a souped-up version of its o1 reasoning AI, exclusively for developers willing to pay a premium. Priced at $150 per million input tokens and $600 per million output tokens, o1-pro costs twice as much as its predecessor and ten times more than the standard o1 model.

Despite mixed early reviews on math and coding reliability, OpenAI claims the model offers better responses to complex problems by leveraging higher computing power. While it remains to be seen if developers will embrace the hefty price tag, this launch signals OpenAI’s confidence in monetizing "harder-thinking" AI capabilities.

2. Microsoft Unveils MCP for Copilot Studio, Streamlining AI Integration 🔌

Microsoft has just introduced the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in Copilot Studio, making it easier than ever to connect AI apps and agents to real-time data sources with minimal hassle. According to Microsoft, MCP allows users to link APIs and knowledge servers seamlessly, automatically updating tools and actions as they evolve, reducing headaches for developers and businesses alike.

This innovation also gives users access to a growing marketplace of pre-built integrations while maintaining enterprise-grade security. With MCP, Microsoft aims to simplify how companies scale AI-powered agents, making it a game-changer for those wanting smarter workflows without the maintenance nightmare.

3. Oracle Unveils AI Agent Studio to Revolutionize Enterprise Workflows 🛠️

Oracle just dropped a game-changer at CloudWorld London: the Oracle AI Agent Studio, a no-cost platform that lets businesses create, customize, and manage AI agents for their unique needs. According to Oracle, this new tool empowers companies to streamline complex tasks across HR, finance, and supply chains with seamless integration into Fusion Cloud Applications and third-party systems.

With features like pre-built agent templates, multi-agent orchestration, and support for various large language models, Oracle is making advanced AI accessible to enterprises without the extra hassle—or cost.

4. Yahoo’s Secret to a Comeback? Artificial Intelligence 🤖

Yahoo, once the internet’s crown jewel, is leveraging AI to power its renaissance, according to WIRED. Under CEO Jim Lanzone, the company has revamped its homepage using tech from Artifact, an AI news aggregator, and is preparing to roll out AI-powered tools for Yahoo Finance to help users make and save money effortlessly.

Despite its turbulent past, Yahoo now boasts top rankings in news and finance traffic, signaling a surprising turnaround.

5. Report: AI Closing the Gap on Human Expertise 🤓

AI systems are rapidly improving at tackling long, complex tasks, with some models now matching human performance on projects that take nearly an hour, according to a new study by METR in Berkeley. The analysis reveals that the "time horizon" for leading AI models—the duration of tasks they can complete at a 50% success rate—has doubled every seven months since 2019 and is now accelerating even faster.

At this pace, AI could reliably handle tasks that take humans a month by 2029, potentially enabling breakthroughs like launching businesses or advancing scientific discoveries.

🦾How You Can Leverage:

Sumit Gupta legit wrote a book on Tableau.

Now, he forgets basic queries that he ACTUALLY wrote the book on. 

Sumit is Notion’s Business Intelligence lead, and he joined the Everyday AI show today for some hot takes on….. intelligence. 

Like — are we losing our intelligence as we use LLMs? Is GenAI making us more productive, but dumber? 

It’s happening everywhere. 

Sumit revealed that AI slashes his dashboard creation time from weeks to hours – a 5,000% productivity boost. Sounds amazing until the cognitive bill comes due.

At Berkeley, professors are watching student test scores crater to decade-lows while questions during class have virtually disappeared.

Even more alarming?

An AI-generated SQL query that should've cost a few dollars to execute recently racked up a $10,000 bill at Notion because it lacked efficiency optimizations.

These aren't hypothetical scenarios.

These are real-world warning flares from someone who lives on AI's bleeding edge.

Today’s convo is an insightful one. Hopefully it’ll make you think. 

(You know… let’s use our brains together!) 

Before or after you dive in, here’s three big takeaways from our convo. 👇

1. AI Can Quietly Eat Your Brain 🚨

AI’s biggest danger isn’t obvious mistakes. It’s subtle, gradual mental erosion.

Sumit says before AI, complex SQL queries kept his mind sharp.

Manually building dashboards forced him to think critically, analyze deeply, and develop robust solutions. Now? ClaudeAI quickly pumps out perfect calculations, so he rarely engages in deep thinking.

The dangerous result?

He notices a decline in his cognitive agility, becoming slower when facing complex issues. AI hasn’t just streamlined tasks—it’s quietly making it harder

(Same.)

Try this

Strategically limit AI use on complex tasks. Force manual problem-solving weekly. Analyze your cognitive agility quarterly by attempting challenging tasks without AI. Verify AI-generated work manually, no matter how reliable it appears. Reflect monthly on tasks reclaimed from AI to ensure mental sharpness.

When using GenAI, the study showed that knowledge workers perceived that critical thinking activities generally required less effort compared to when they didn't use AI. For instance, 72% reported "much less effort" or "less effort" for recalling information

2. Don’t Let AI Hijack Your Strongest Skills đź’ˇ 

His SQL expertise faded dramatically after repeatedly outsourcing tasks to AI tools. Remembering basic commands grew harder—an alarming wake-up call.

Sumit argues AI should complement, never replace, your key strengths.

Short-term efficiency gained from AI outsourcing can severely degrade your core skills, creating long-term vulnerability.

Try this

Regularly test core skills without AI support.

Implement firm boundaries around your strongest expertise, keeping them AI-free. Analyze skill retention quarterly through manual task assessments.

Verify periodically that your reliance on AI isn’t creeping upward unnoticed. Reflect monthly on maintaining the right balance between efficiency and essential skill retention.

Proactively guard your expertise to stay sharp.

 3. AI Blindspots Cost Companies Big đź’¸

Sumit detailed a shocking reality: blind trust in AI can lead to enormous hidden costs.

He cited a frightening scenario where AI-generated code inadvertently leaked AWS keys, resulting in a a huge and costly security breach.

Another costly mistake involved AI-written SQL queries running inefficiently, incurring thousands in unnecessary expenses.

Yikes.

Unchecked AI usage isn’t just risky for your common sense. It can be risky for your dollar bills.

Try this

Regularly test AI-generated solutions for hidden vulnerabilities.

Implement rigid financial controls for AI-driven projects. Analyze weekly spending to catch AI-induced anomalies quickly. Verify security measures rigorously to prevent costly errors. Reflect monthly on the true ROI of your AI investments.

A Y Combinator report showed that 95% of startups relying on AI-driven code.

Sumit's advice? Use AI to amplify productivity. But keep your skills sharp and don’t let an over-reliance on LLMs diminish your brainpower.

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