The speed of Generative AI is addictive, but it comes with a hidden cost to our critical thinking. In " AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking ", Michael Gerlich demonstrates how delegating mental tasks to AI can lead to "cognitive offloading," a process that may dull critical thinking abilities over time (Gerlich p. 2). Complementing this, André Barcaui’s " ChatGPT as a Cognitive Crutch: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial on knowledge retention ," measures the practical impact of this phenomenon on knowledge retention. By comparing AI-assisted learning with traditional methods, Barcaui confirms that the mental shortcuts Gerlich warns about lead to a significant deficit in actual learning and directly impairs a practitioner’s ability to retain information long term (Barcaui p. 4). Together, these works suggest that an uncritical reliance on AI is more than a change in workflow; it is a potential ri...