Edison Earl excels at his job as a graduate intern at Arts University Bournemouth in England. He¡¯s produced more marketing content than ever for the school and doubled its Instagram followers in the last seven months.

But he struggles to take credit, since the ChatGPT app did much of the work. In the last two years he¡¯s gone from brainstorming on paper to talking to ChatGPT most of the day. ¡°Can you rewrite this email for me?¡± he¡¯ll ask it. ¡°What do you think of this social media post and this event?¡± And it not just work; the 23-year-old enlists its help in everything from choosing what to eat to what clothes to buy.

Earl freely admits that he¡¯s become dependent on the tool launched by OpenAI in late 2022, now regularly used by more than 400 million people. It and similar software, including Gemini from Alphabet¡¯s Google or Anthropic¡¯s Claude, are marketed as digital interns or research assistants. The downside for actual interns and new starters I¡¯ve spoken to: Some are becoming overly reliant on artificial intelligence, muddying the path to seniority, undermining their self-confidence and heightening their imposter syndrome. ¡°I was trusting it so much that I lost faith in my own decisions and thought process,¡± Earl says.

Young employees use AI tools more than middle and senior managers, often because they¡¯re still developing an ¡°internal compass,¡± according to a 2025 study by Dutch management consultancy BearingPoint, which surveyed more than 300 managers in Europe and the U.S. While senior execs often ignore AI tools because they trust their own expertise (a little too much, perhaps), their newest recruits do the opposite.

Earl recalls having immense pride in his work before he started using ChatGPT. Now there¡¯s an emptiness he can¡¯t put his finger on. ¡°I became lazier. ... I instantly go to AI because it¡¯s embedded in me that it will create a better response,¡± he says. That kind of conditioning can be powerful at a younger age.

An HR executive said that one of her new recruits recently confessed to not knowing how to contribute to team meetings. When pressed as to why, she explained that she¡¯d entered the workforce during the COVID-19 lockdowns and had come to rely on the hand-raising feature on Microsoft Teams, the video conferencing platform. With no hand emoji to activate in real life, she had to learn how speak up in work confabs.

AI¡¯s conditioning goes beyond office etiquette to potentially eroding critical thinking skills, a phenomenon that researchers from Microsoft have pointed to and which Earl himself has noticed. ¡°It does feel like my brain is a bit idle,¡± he says. ¡°I¡¯m not pushing the boundaries...