A mental health cost of AI: A threat to mastery activities

I often have clients with issues involving low self-esteem. One of my go-to strategies to help these clients is to have them incorporate mastery activities into their lives. Mastery activities are those in which a person accomplishes something and uses their talents and skills. Mastery activities can include occupational activities, exercise, sports and a wide array of hobbies and interests.

Unfortunately, it appears that people’s continuing engagement in mastery activities may be threatened by the most recent revolutionary development in technology—artificial intelligence or, as it is commonly called, AI. In the following sections, I will discuss how AI poses a threat to mastery activities and steps which can be taken to stave off the threat—such as my writing this article.

The double-edged sword of AI

I think of AI as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a major benefit of AI is that it performs many tasks better and faster than humans. On the other hand, a huge downside of AI is that it outperforms humans on so many tasks that there are increasingly fewer tasks for humans to perform.

The most publicized manifestation of this AI disadvantage is humans being replaced by AI in their jobs. The degree of devastation in so many people’s lives from this effect of AI is incalculable. Although psychologist does not appear to be an occupation in which AI will replace humans, I would be lying if I said I had no concerns about my career given that it is impossible to predict the future impact of AI.

AI as a threat to mastery activities

Leaving aside the issue of occupational displacement, a negative effect of AI which gets less attention is its impact on mastery activities. But this negative consequence of AI is just as real and arguably just as impactful. Just as AI makes it less likely that people will continue to perform their occupations, it also makes it less likely that people will continue to perform many mastery activities.

To illustrate, I will use writing which is one of my mastery activities. Unlike practicing psychology, writing stories, scripts, articles, and essays is clearly an activity which AI can do as well as most humans and can do faster than all humans. The result is that many people have asked AI to do their writing for them rather than them doing it themselves. So many students ask AI to write their term papers, some speakers have AI prepare their speeches and some journalists have AI write their stories.

The benefits of using AI to produce these various written products are clear. However, there are potential downsides. One of these is getting in trouble as many students discovered when they submitted AI-generated work and passed it off as their own. But suppose there are no punishments to fear. What other negative consequences are there for having AI write a story for you instead of you writing the story yourself?

The downside of not doing it yourself and the benefits of doing it yourself

Letting AI write your story for you deprives you of the opportunity to engage in writing as a mastery activity. This is a significant cost to keep in mind when you are tempted by the immediate benefit of relieving yourself of the effort and stress which are required when you write your own story.

This is a fundamental reason that I write blog articles like this every two weeks and have done so for the last several years. Exerting the effort and enduring the stress and frustration to think of ideas and write articles from scratch pays huge mental health dividends.

The primary benefit is a regular boost to my self-esteem from performing a challenging task. A related benefit is that it hones my communication skills, written and verbal, which I use regularly in my work. The added confidence from having honed these skills through writing articles further boosts my self-esteem from engaging in this mastery activity.

In other words, the process of writing as a mastery activity is rewarding in and of itself. Whether the outcome of the writing brings any additional rewards is immaterial. I also consider it irrelevant how many people read my articles. Having said that, I often assign articles to clients for homework to help them address their issues. In addition, many prospective clients have told me that they sought my services after having read one or more of my articles.

Resisting the lure of AI to reap the benefits of mastery activities

Among the most challenging activities I faced in university were researching and writing term papers. Most courses had them as a significant part of the grade. They required much time and effort, so I naturally disliked doing them.

However, once I became absorbed in the research and writing I found these assignments stimulating because they let me become a mini-expert in the topic and gave me practice honing my writing skills. Looking back, I realize that these demanding assignments helped me to develop writing as a mastery activity and to see the value to my self-esteem and mental health of making this and other mastery activities part of my routine.

At the time I did those term papers, AI was not available as a tool to help with the research, outlining and writing. In retrospect, I think it was a blessing not to have AI as an aid. I may well have used it to some extent—academic regulations permitting—but doing so would have deprived me of the self-esteem and mental health benefits which I accrued from doing all the work involved.

Now that AI is available, I will choose not to use it as an aid to write articles like this one. Resisting the lure of AI will thereby allow me to continue to reap the benefits of one of my mastery activities.

If writing or other mastery activities in which you engage are potentially threatened by AI, I hope that you also can resist the temptation to go all in on this technological aid. Doing so will help you also to continue enjoying the self-esteem and mental health benefits of mastery activities.

May you stave off the threats of AI to your mastery activities,

-Dr. Pat