The Rise of AImnesia

This is not a hate or love post about AI. This is about humans.

We find ourselves in a turbulent era. In the morning you speak to an intelligent colleague. By 4 p.m., the same person is prompting a 10-page workshop document when you only asked for feedback on the agenda. The next day another colleague mentions an AI-first project taking off in the company, only to find out they actually do not know what problem they want to solve. You open your SharePoint files to look for documentation, but now there are five versions of the same document since yesterday.

Maybe I can run a prompt to have them summarized back to me?

I was sitting in a Retrospective ceremony with one of the development teams when a new topic started to appear: User stories that do not make any sense. Don’t get me wrong—this was not the first time a complaint like that was raised by the devs. But now the problem was very different—the semantics were off and the user stories didn’t make any logical connections to what the IT system was meant to do. Instead of taking responsibility for validating the outputs against the product vision, the PM questioned the formatting of the AI-generated stories.

This situation unearthed several uncomfortable truths:

Some people stop checking outputs—even if those outputs directly shape the product.

If this had been a fully AI-generated solution, we would have lost control entirely.

When you outsource too much thinking, something I call “AImnesia” sets in—you forget what the product is actually for.

AI is a great sidekick. But only when used deliberately.

Human brain does not evolve in decades. Technology does. The same human flaws from thousands of years ago are still here. Pride, greed, sloth—they didn’t disappear. They just found new interfaces. Too proud to admit you didn’t prompt it. Too greedy to skip the next AI-powered initiative. Too lazy to pause before prompting again.

This is not just an adoption period. It has consequences. The main consequence is that some people stopped using their common sense. And it is hard to get that habit back. What smartphones started—outsourcing small daily decisions—AI is now accelerating at scale.

I have worked for medium-sized tech companies—startups or scaleups—none of them part of “Big IT”, so perhaps this sounds naïve to some at the forefront of the industry. And I genuinely hope this has already been addressed elsewhere—and that it is only my environment lagging behind.

However, for those who are in a similar position, there are a few simple yet powerful rules that can be implemented when dealing with AI or establishing a new company AI routine:

Be explicit about what AI is—and what it isn’t.

It is: An extremely powerful analytical machine. You put input in, it generates output out, in different forms (words, pictures, prototypes, code). Nothing more, nothing less.

It is not: A decision maker. An independently thinking brain that can put ideas together while maintaining the context. An unmistakable tool.

Define explicitly what AI is for in your team.

If it creates more work without value—cut it. Even if it is fast.

If you go for AI agents and full AI-driven development—establish human checkpoints.

Do not let it take over direct communication with the clients. You ask the questions—and listen.

Challenge everyone to make five decisions a day without AI—personal or work related. Keep the brain engaged.

There will be backlash against the pace AI revolution brings. Some might say I sound like a factory worker from the early 20th century—not accepting progress—but unlike them I actually like working with the machines. I am more concerned about the impact on human mental health. More and more people won’t be “able” to catch up. I use quotes, because it is not faulty behavior—it is simply the way our brains are wired. I suspect the next rebellion won’t be against AI. It will be against acceleration.

And to me, it will be especially interesting to observe Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are so highly digitized and connected, but on the other hand they bring new ideas about how life should be lived and not just endured. Let’s hope they will learn how to bring common sense back into fashion.

With love,

Zuzana

Bonus

A thought experiment: What if AI had been designed under a different set of values?

*Do not confuse with:

Gender bias - the tendency of artificial intelligence systems to generate outputs that reflect, reinforce, or amplify societal stereotypes and inequalities regarding gender.

Imagine AI had been primarily designed by teams trained in relational psychology, emotional labor, and collaborative decision-making—domains historically overrepresented by women.

Imagine two AI systems.

Both technically brilliant.

Both trained on the same dataset.

But built under different design philosophies.

Model A*:* Optimized for speed, confidence, output volume.

Model B: Optimized for context retention, clarification, and collaboration.

Model A answers fast and confidently.

Model B sometimes asks back:

• What is the real goal behind this request?
• Who will be affected?
• What trade-off are you willing to accept?

The real questions:

• Which one scales better?

• Which one causes less harm?

• And perhaps the real opportunity is not to debate who builds AI—but to reflect and consciously decide which human traits we want to amplify.