Will AI make us dumber in 10 years?

That depends on the person. AI can make the curious smarter and the lazy dumber, and the machine does not care which one you are. In 2008 The Atlantic asked "Is Google making us stupid?" It did not. Google sharpened the people who asked better questions and gave the rest an excuse. AI does the same, at 100 times the speed. But the person is not the only risk. Mainstream media, Google and AI can all manipulate you, and the newest weapon is synthetic media: fake faces, fake voices and fake news that look more real than the real thing. I forecast that by 2030 more than 90% of what you see on social media is synthetic. Google could hide a search result. Synthetic media can fool everybody. NewsGuard tested the 10 leading AI chatbots in August 2025: they repeated false claims 35% of the time, up from 18% a year earlier. A machine that lies with confidence does not make you dumb. It makes you misinformed, and that is worse, because you feel smart. Now the other side. Harvard tested 194 physics students with an AI tutor in 2025: they learned more than twice as much in less time than in the classroom. MIT tested 54 students writing essays with ChatGPT: the lowest brain activity of 3 groups, and 83% could not quote 1 sentence of their own essay minutes later. Same technology, opposite result. The difference was the person using it. My forecast for 2036. AI does not make humanity dumber. It splits humanity in 2. The curious get sharper every year. The lazy lose the muscle. The gullible get played. For 10,000 years the gap between people was money. By 2036 the gap is curiosity, plus 1 habit: check the source.