In today’s column, I examine the fierce debate about whether generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are spurring people toward a greater sense of mindfulness or whether AI is turning our minds toward worsening mindlessness. This high-profile controversy is making outsized headlines and causing abundant handwringing about the present and future psychological status of society.

The usual consideration is that the rising use of modern-era AI must fall into either helping our cognition or undermining our cognition. On the plus side, AI can aid people in seeing the world anew, pointing out new ideas, stirring creativity, and offering fresh perspectives that otherwise were not already in our minds. The negative side is that AI is perceived as a type of cognitive crutch that we are outsourcing our thinking process to. Along those lines, there is worry that the persistent expansion of AI is creating a nefarious mental trap, leading to a society-wide decay in mental prowess. One nuanced aspect of this that might seem surprising is that AI can be prodding us in both directions at the same time. On the surface, that seems oddly contradictory, but it is indeed possible to have both a push and pull occurring simultaneously. The question is whether, like a torrid game of tug-of-war, one end will ultimately prevail over the other.

Let’s talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here ).

Intertwining AI And Psychology

As a quick background, I’ve been extensively covering and analyzing a myriad of psychological facets regarding the advent of modern-era AI that produces mental health advice and performs AI-driven therapy. This rising use of AI has principally been spurred by the evolving advances and widespread adoption of generative AI and LLMs such as ChatGPT, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and others. For a recap of my two hundred analyses and postings about AI and mental health, see the link here and the link here . I frequently speak up about these pressing matters, including in an appearance on an episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes ; see the link here .

My efforts are intended to inform and engage in thoughtful dialogue on the pressing issues at hand. There are some that focus only on the upbeat side of AI and others that concentrate solely on the downbeat side of AI. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition, namely that AI is the best thing since sliced bread or the worst monstrosity ever devised. I don’t find those extreme views to provide clarity, nor do they offer a semblance of balance. Let’s be upfront and cover the ins and outs, which allow for cogent discussions and can aid policymakers, lawmakers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, and the like in discovering sensible and suitable paths forward. AI is not going away. AI is here to stay and will increasingly become ubiquitous.

Meaning Of Mindfulness And Mindlessness

What does it mean to assert that someone is mindful versus mindless?

In an insightful research paper entitled “Being Mindful About Mindfulness” by Francesco Pagnini and Deborah Phillips, published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2015, the following salient points were made on this topic (excerpts):

  • “A mindful outlook helps people to avoid automatic behaviors that rely on pre-existing or underlying assumptions and evaluations that might not be applicable to the current situation.”
  • “Ellen Langer’s concept of mindfulness is characterized by the process of actively making new distinctions about a situation and its environment, rather than relying on automatic categorizations from the past.”
  • “This process of paying attention to novelty and to the context of the current situation can lead an individual to approach the scenario from many possible perspectives, reframing events in more than one way.”
  • “Processing information within this framework might result in positive health-related outcomes.”
  • “Mindfulness is the reverse of mindlessness, in which a person takes a perspective about an event or a situation and relies on automatic or repetitive thought processes, judgments, and behavior. When mindless, people rely on previously established distinctions and categories, which in turn can lead to maladaptive behavior.”

An important takeaway is that how we think can crucially determine our actions and outcomes, including impacting us physically in a mind-body interleaved manner. Mindfulness tends to encourage positive health, while mindlessness often veers into flawed or dysfunctional behaviors.

Trend Toward AI-Driven Mindlessness

Shift gears and consider the prevailing widespread use of generative AI. The advent of advanced LLMs has led hundreds of millions of people into the ongoing use of AI to aid them in their everyday decision-making (for my analysis of stats about usage of AI, see the link here ). It goes like this. Unsure about making a tough decision at work? No worries, ask AI. Having problems in a close relationship? See what AI has to advise. Etc.

This persistent tapping into AI is said to be a means of avoiding the use of our own minds, and that we are outsourcing our thinking to a machine. It might be an inch at a time. Perhaps, over a lengthy period of months or years, our mental capacity to think could be demonstrably undermined.

Mindlessness could be instigated via these mechanisms:

  • (1) Cognitive offloading: Why engage your own mind when you can lazily allow AI to look up stuff and figure things out for you?
  • (2) Reduced deliberation: No need to strain your mind to identify the pros and cons of something; just let AI do that hard deliberative work for you.
  • (3) Intellectual passivity: AI gets things right most of the time, and thus there is little need to mentally challenge what AI advises.
  • (4) Metacognitive atrophy: Lessening human decision-making is bound to undercut the mental capacity to think in a larger big-picture way.
  • (5) And so on.

A vicious cycle arises. A person drifting toward mindlessness would presumably tend to use AI with increasing frequency. They put their cognition on autopilot, expecting AI to do what their mind no longer seems capable of doing. The use of AI begets more reliance on AI in a never-ending downward spiral.

Trend Toward AI-Driven Mindfulness

Wait a second, what about the upsides of using AI? The sour contention that AI is ruining our minds is a one-sided argument. Many people would insist that they use AI to avidly expand their minds. All this talk about AI harming our cognition is merely a doom-and-gloom rendition.

Mindfulness can be inspired and fostered by AI in these ways:

  • (1) Thinking anew: AI gets a person to reflect thoughtfully on the decisions they make and prods them toward reviewing their personal slants and staked-out viewpoints in new ways.
  • (2) Metacognition-inspiring: AI can stimulate people to think in a big-picture way about how they think.
  • (3) Multiple perspectives: People can interact with AI to become more aware of alternative perspectives that they otherwise had not envisioned, such as the use of AI personas.
  • (4) Intellectual curiosity: AI can foster intellectual interests and spur a person toward enhanced intellectual curiosity.
  • (5) Attention stimulus: AI can get a person to escape from routine thinking and aid them in becoming more attentive to the world around themselves.

This suggests that a mentally uplifting cycle can ensue. A person potentially becomes increasingly mindful as they make use of AI to train their mind to be expansive. AI is serving as a psycho-educational mechanism that improves mental capacity. Furthermore, the ongoing use of AI keeps them on their toes and mitigates a potential backsliding into prior dour mental ways.

An important question to ask is this: Under what conditions does AI produce each?

In other words, AI does not by necessity alone drive the human mind toward mindfulness or mindlessness. The use of AI can variously fuel either side of the coin. Sometimes doing both at once.

We need to conduct suitable psychological research that empirically identifies the factors that play a substantive role in determining these outcomes. What types of cognitive tasks tend to be involved? In what ways is AI being prompted? How does the AI maker shape AI to drive in one direction or the other? What do the mental wherewithal and stance of the user suggest about the mindfulness versus mindlessness derivation? My ongoing coverage identifies and examines research studies that bear on these crucial questions; see the link here .

Calculating The Net Effect

If a zero-sum game is afoot, we might be tempted to believe that there will be one winner and one loser in this battle between AI-driven mindfulness and AI-driven mindlessness. After an extended period of using AI, people will either succumb to mindlessness or be exalted into mindfulness.

There are two potential net effect results:

  • (a) Mindfulness Premium. AI-driven mindfulness exceeds the detrimental AI-driven mindlessness in the long-term.
  • (b) Mindlessness Plume. AI-driven mindlessness exceeds the uplifting AI-driven mindfulness in the long-term.

Which will prevail? The jury is still out. Modern LLMs have not been around long enough to calculate on a population-level basis whether we are heading toward a net effect of the mindfulness premium or the mindlessness plume. Early detection would certainly be helpful, especially if the mindlessness pathway is going to triumph.

A contrarian viewpoint is that this is not going to be a winner-take-all circumstance. There will be a constant battle of AI driving humankind toward mental mindfulness and mental mindlessness, doing both at the same time. Some people will undoubtedly land on one side or the other. Meanwhile, the population overall will be swinging back-and-forth and never fully be cast into one side or the other. This will continue indefinitely.

A final thought for now. A famous remark by William Shakespeare was this: “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” I agree. Indeed, it is up to humankind to decide how AI is to be utilized and what impact it will have. The net effect of daily doses of AI-driven mindfulness and mindlessness is not beyond our reach to control. Psychologists and behaviorists have a prominent role to play in where AI is heading and what AI benefits or adversities will eventually arise. The fate of humanity is at stake.