Original Thinking in a World Full of Shortcuts
Marko Mazepa
“AI, give me 10, no, 50 ideas to make me rich, very rich, overnight,” I laughed every time I saw this meme online. It seems childish to believe in AI’s ability to generate an original idea that would make me a millionaire tomorrow. If this was the case, over 1 billion AI users would be millionaires. I still generate start-up ideas, pick-up lines, and recipes to clean up the fridge. Brainstorming with AI is no longer limited to daily tasks; it is even encouraged in my studies.
One morning, I woke up feeling stuck with an idea for my master’s thesis. I shared my frustration with friends over lunch. Some were convinced I needed AI to get ahead and publish my thesis because it could edit my work in minutes, instead of hours at the writing center. They called AI the book of all knowledge. Others said they wasted writing time on prompting AI to apply all the knowledge in context. AI did not serve creativity on a golden platter.
I left the canteen, not knowing what to do. Back at my desk, I stared at the blank page throughout the afternoon. Eventually, I went to bed, but no ideas for my thesis came overnight. Instead, I felt left behind by friends who had already published academic work with AI’s help.
The next day, I prompted AI to brainstorm the top 3 most feasible, relevant, and original thesis topics in my field. All 3 topics sounded fresh and academically rigorous. I started to research each topic only to realize that they either followed a red herring or created a blue ocean I could not fill with available data. I repeatedly criticized and refined the ideas through extra readings and personal experiences to turn them into a complete product. After I formed the topic that satisfied me, I noticed the fine print: anything you share with AI is reviewed by humans, and could be used for AI training purposes.
I don’t know what felt worse: having my ideas used for AI training or realizing it’s the default setting until I opt out. I feed my original thoughts to AI so that the company could anonymize my work and benefit from it without attributing authorship. I thought I paid for a supportive chatbot that spares the burden of making mistakes and completing repetitive tasks. Instead, headlines warn about AI’s potential for copyright infringement and privacy risks as AI companies quietly change their terms of service. These developments indicate that the price we pay for outsourcing our original thinking to AI stretches beyond monthly subscriptions.
We are becoming part of the AI business model where we supply creativity for free to be sold back to us. Before, we would worry about a colleague stealing our ideas for a project. Now, we trust AI to handle our projects in exchange for gradual appropriation of original thinking.
If you ask me, I don’t want to surrender my ideas to AI but I wouldn’t abandon it either. Sharing knowledge with or without AI is how humanity grows, as long as we protect the intellectual property rights of its contributors. After all, if we respect the property rights of AI companies, we should also respect the rights of its users to opt out.
About the PlagiarismSearch.com’s Scholarship Winner
I am a graduate student from Ukraine currently pursuing a joint Master of Arts in Transatlantic Affairs between the College of Europe and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. I completed my Bachelor’s degree at the American University in Bulgaria, where I double-majored in Political Science and European Studies. I am passionate about U.S.-E.U. foreign affairs and aim to work in international organizations providing humanitarian aid to refugee women and children in developing countries.