There are multiple layers to this. I think I second everything sc is saying, both that offloading mental load to a tool if available is natural and not specifically indicating that critical thinking is eroded and also the chicken and egg problem if AI is eroding critical thinking or people without critical use AI more.
Anyways, it also wouldn't be new that overreliance on a tool can have negative consequences. I remember something about a ship going wrong as the GPS failed, because while the navigator was trained to get position by other means they relied too strongly on the GPS to really check.
That is a danger I see with LLMs as well. I am a programmer and I am using happily AI for programming, but I deliberately avoid putting AI into my IDE and sure as hell avoid vibe-coding. Putting AI into the IDE is *too* convenient, I fear it reduces my ability to check the results, if I can just let it do a function I probably would avoid looking too deeply into it. Instead I am using AI-chat like asking a coworker: if I am stuck or unsure I ask and then check the results (yes, I do that with coworkers answers as well). This way I try to avoid overreliance at the price of less convenience.
