I subscribe to Herbert Lui’s “blog on creativity, marketing, and the human condition” with my feed reader. On April 9, 2026, I opened what was then his newest post, titled Creative enfeeblement. I had a feeling based on having read some of his other recent writing that it would touch on the effect of AI usage on creativity. That turned out to be correct, albeit the opening struck me as somewhat disagreeable in its phrasing:
You and I are using AI. Maybe a lot, and that involvement is only increasing.
Not so fast my friend. The New Leaf Journal and its sister short-form writing site and newsletter are entirely humane publications. Whether praising or criticizing AI, it is better to not presuppose everyone in your audience is waist-deep in it. But setting that aside, his broader point after presupposing that readers are using AI was sound.
One of the consequences of using it so much is relying on it, potentially to the point of our minds growing feeble.
Again quibbling with the use of our, this strikes me as correct. Without disregarding the possibility that AI (broadly defined) has plenty of potentially good use-cases, off-loading creative work to it has two obvious potential deleterious effects. Firstly, the output of a language model may lack human creativity (out on a limb take). Secondly, relying on the sophisticated autocorrect algorithm instead of one’s own mind creates dependency over time, or, as Mr. Lui describes it, creative enfeeblement. But I am not writing this article state the obvious. I was inspired to use Mr. Lui’s post as a springboard for my own when I read his penultimate sentence, quoted with my emphasis added:
You need to be able to work without [AI], just in case, the same way you need to be able to do simple math in case you can’t use a calculator (or aren’t in a situation where it’s appropriate).
Let me tell you a story.
When I was very young, I preferred math to English and the humanities. As I advanced into middle school and high school, it became clear to me that I was better with words than math, although I will have you know I was still usually an “A” math student through high school despite being better markedly better at English and history. Speaking of the language arts, I previously wrote about serving as the student editor of my high school newspaper in my senior year.
But this article is not about newspaper. It will be about math, but hang tight for a few.
My high school (“school” may be loosely defined but that is another matter) decreed that all seniors had to do something for “senior involvement” on Fridays. While this may sound like some sort of inspiring community endeavor, I am confident it was because the school was mailing it in. There were numerous incidents of classes with no teachers on Friday and seniors leaving in the morning. But again, let us not distract ourselves.
I was not inclined to undertake some form of community service for senior involvement. I had previously attended the middle school attached to the high school. I talked to my former teacher math and science at the middle school and she was enthusiastic about my coming to help out with her post-lunch science class. My senior involvement problem was solved! So too were the senior involvement dilemmas of two of my friends, who liked my idea and followed me to the middle school after lunch on Fridays. They had not attended the middle school and ended up stuffing envelopes instead of helping the little middle school kids learn, but that too is neither here nor there.
Having said what is neither here nor there, you may think that this science class I mentioned is here or there. But if you think that, you would be wrong. I did help out with a middle school science class, but there were two periods after lunch. That class took up just one (conversely, my own physics class was a double-period on Tuesdays and Thursdays in my senior year). The middle school science teacher only had something for me to do for one period on Fridays, so I was some manner or another directed elsewhere for the last period of the day at the middle school. “Elsewhere” here was a small study group overseen by a teacher from the middle school who I had never had a class with when I was there (I think I had been older than the classes she worked with). I recall there were two boys who were there to work on their homework. I was there to help.
One of the boys was working on his math homework. I helped him with his 8th grade math. At that time I still remembered my 8th grade math well enough to help others. But I helped him with a catch: I forced him to do some of the math by hand instead of using his calculator, even though he was “allowed” to use his calculator. He did not much like my directive, but the teacher overseeing the study group did not find it disagreeable, so I prevailed. He would sharpen his algebra skills by hand, using his brain instead of the calculator.
I submit for the record that I was not requiring this boy to do some of the math in his head and by hand because I disliked him. I actually liked him. He was funny and struck me as a good kid. I gave this directive because I thought it was best for him. While math was not my best subject, I was good at doing arithmetic in my head and by hand (at least compared to my peers, so I make no claims in a vacuum). In high school, I observed with some concern that some of my classmates had become wholly dependent on their calculators to the extent that I suggested they may have been better off had they been required to do math without a calculator when they were younger. For my part, I tried to do as much by hand as possible and practicable, despite having unnecessarily upgraded my TI-84 to an 89 (discussed in an early NLJ haiku article and my newspaper memories). My thinking was in line with Mr. Lui’s advice about AI: Calculators are valuable tools, but you should not be wholly reliant on them (especially in the context of K-12 math).
I unexpectedly ran into that kid about two-and-one-half years later at my friend’s birthday party. Funny enough, this was one of the friends who was so inspired by my working with middle schoolers for senior involvement that he got himself a job stuffing envelopes at the same school. I had no idea that the 7th grade kid I was helping in math on Fridays was a family friend of my 12th grade classmate. Of course, when I say “ran into that kid,” I mean he said hi. I would not have recognized him. He had grown substantially in a few years. Once I connected the dots, I asked him if he was doing math without a calculator. He laughed.
These days, calculators may be the least of the problem. Much like Barnes & Noble was known for crushing independent bookstores back when I was in school, but is now reverting to something of a feel-good old-school local bookstore upstart against the Amazonian juggernaut. Maybe the kids just ask AI how to do the math now and do not even know how to use a calculator. I do not know. But I stand by my advice. And sure enough, while I never ended up progressing past the high school level in math, I am still sufficiently proficient in doing simple math without a calculator for all normal purposes.
