How AI Is Quietly Shaping the Way We Speak, Think, and Create

The other day I was talking with ChatGPT and told my wife that I had decided to be more direct and simply ask for what I wanted. No politeness. She laughed and said something that stuck with me: “You’re not doing that for the machine, you’re doing that for yourself. Because soon you’ll be speaking that way with people too.”

That small remark hit me hard. Because she’s right.

We tend to think of large language models as tools we adapt to, but in reality, they’re adapting us as much as we adapt them. Generative AI, especially natural language models, is already reshaping the way we structure our thoughts, the way we write, the way we formulate requests, and even the way we create.

Think about it: when we change how we give prompts to a machine, we’re not just optimizing a workflow. We’re adjusting our mental model of communication itself. That inevitably leaks into our daily lives: into how we write emails, how we make requests at work, or even how we tell stories at the dinner table.

AI is not only automating tasks, it is quietly influencing language. And language, in turn, shapes thought. If our words change, our thinking follows.

This is more than just a tech trend. It’s a cultural shift. We’re in the middle of a feedback loop where human language trains machines, and machines reshape human language. And that is worth reflecting on.