AI can produce outputs that look like thinking, without the cognitive effort behind them.

Speed and fluency replace resistance, the very process that makes ideas real.

When certainty outruns scrutiny, the cost isn't just cognitive—it's real.

The other day, a good friend sent me a well-written note. It was the kind of text that reflects careful thinking and a clear signal of professional insight. But when I asked a simple follow-up, the answer didn't expand the content; it unraveled it. The language, at best, worked in a sort of scripted way, but the reasoning behind it didn't. My first instinct was to ask who I was corresponding with.

I'm seeing this all over—in meetings, conversations, and social media—where the discourse sounds complete until you try to move them one step further. I think of this as anti-intelligence. And this isn't a failure of intelligence, but a sort of reversal. The outputs remain, but the process that once gave them cognitive substance doesn't.

Anti-intelligence is what happens when the product of thinking survives while the thinking itself stops doing the same work. Let's take a look at four examples that are becoming all too common and problematic.

1. Performative........

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