I wear a few different hats in my daily life. In one room, I am a medical doctor—a healer trained to look at symptoms, understand the underlying pathology, and make life-altering decisions based on evidence. In another, I am a software developer and an open-source advocate who has lived in the terminal since the 90s.
These two worlds. medicine and code, have one thing in common: they both rely on a rigorous, disciplined approach to problem-solving. If you get lazy in medicine, people suffer. If you get lazy in code, systems fail.
Lately, I’ve been watching a disturbing trend. Over the last few months, I’ve visited several local tech companies and sat with developers who have years of experience. What I saw was a slow, creeping intellectual laziness. I saw engineers who have stopped “thinking” and started “copy-pasting.” They treat AI as a replacement for their intellect rather than an extension of it. They throw a prompt at a chatbox, take the first result, and move on without a single “Why?” or “How?”
This is “Vibe Coding” at its most dangerous. It’s a shortcut that leads to a dead end. And it’s exactly why I decided to change the way my 9-year-old son interacts with technology.
The Curiosity Filter: My Son’s Approach to the Machine
My son is nine. He is already multilingual, speaking three languages fluently, and he’s learning to code. But more important than his ability to write a loop is his ability to ask a question.
When we sit down to work with a chatbot or an AI agent, I don’t teach him to look for the “answer.” I teach him to look for the “logic.”
If he asks an AI to explain a mathematical concept or a piece of syntax, and the AI gives him a direct answer, we don’t stop there. We dive into the “Explain, Why, How” framework:
- Explain: Can you break down the steps you took to get here?
- Why: Why did you choose this specific method over another?
- How: How does this interact with the rest of the system?
- Options: What are the other ways to solve this, and what are the trade-offs?
I’ve watched him sit there and actually “control” the AI. He will tell the model, “Don’t give me the code yet. Explain the logic of the algorithm first, and tell me three different ways this could fail.” At nine years old, he is learning a skill that many senior developers I’ve met recently have forgotten: Critical Orchestration.
He understands that the AI is an extension of his own mind, not a replacement for it. If he doesn’t understand the result, he hasn’t “solved” the problem—the machine has. And if the machine solves the problem for you, you haven’t gained any skill; you’ve just become a middleman for a script.
The Danger of Intellectual Atrophy
The reason I’m so passionate about this is that I see what happens when we stop questioning. In the professional world, I see developers becoming “prompt-dependent.”
When you stop wrestling with a problem—when you stop the “struggle” of understanding why a bug exists—you lose your edge. Your creativity begins to wither. True creativity in engineering and medicine comes from understanding the constraints and then finding a way to dance within them. AI can suggest the dance moves, but it shouldn’t be the one leading.
When we use AI as a replacement for thinking, we are effectively outsourcing our cognitive growth. If a 9-year-old can challenge the AI to explain its reasoning, why are 30-year-old engineers simply hitting “copy” and “paste”?
AI as an Extension, Not a Replacement
In medicine, we use diagnostic tools—MRIs, blood panels, AI-assisted imaging—to help us see what the naked eye cannot. But a doctor who blindly follows a lab report without looking at the patient is a dangerous doctor. We use the tool to expand our vision, but the final judgment—the “intellect”—remains ours.
This is exactly how we must approach AI in software development and education. We should use it to:
- Broaden the Horizon: “Show me how this problem is solved in a language I don’t know yet.”
- Stress Test Ideas: “Here is my logic for this database schema. Try to find three security flaws in it.”
- Bridge Knowledge Gaps: “Explain this complex architectural pattern using an analogy from equestrian sports.”
By using it this way, you are using the AI to sharpen your own brain. You are using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic workflows to handle the “grunt work” so your human mind can stay focused on the high-level design and the “What Ifs.”
Building the Architects of Tomorrow
My son isn’t just learning to use a tool; he’s learning to manage an intelligence. This is the shift we all need to make.
The future belongs to the Agentic Architects—the people who know how to command, question, and verify. It does not belong to the people who are just fast at typing prompts.
If we teach our children (and ourselves) to be lazy with AI, we are raising a generation of “users” who don’t understand the world they live in. But if we teach them to question the “Why” and the “How,” we are raising a generation of creators who can leverage the power of a thousand minds without losing their own.
I’m proud to see my son tell an AI, “Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Explain your second step again.” That moment of friction—that moment of questioning—is where real learning happens. It’s where creativity is born.
My Advice to Developers and Parents Alike:
- Kill the “First-Result” Habit: Never accept the first thing the AI gives you. Ask for alternatives.
- Force the “Why”: If the AI suggests a fix, make it explain the underlying cause of the error first.
- Stay in the IDE, but keep your brain in the Game: Use tools like MCP to bring the AI into your context, but don’t let it drive the car. You are the navigator; it is the engine.
- Encourage the Struggle: Whether it’s your child or your junior dev, don’t let them off the hook with a quick answer. The “struggle” to understand is the only way the brain grows.
We are at a crossroads. We can either become the most capable version of ourselves by using AI as a cognitive exoskeleton, or we can become the most redundant version of ourselves by letting it do the thinking for us.
I’m choosing the former. And I’m making sure my son does too.
What about you? Are you using AI to expand your mind, or are you just letting it save you a few minutes of thinking? Let’s talk about the human side of the AI revolution in the comments.
