I'm Using My Brain

I keep seeing the same sentence in different words.

“I used my fucking brain.”

“Read an actual book. Write an actual text.”

“Your cognitive facilities have degraded through chatbot use.”

The assumption underneath all of it is the same. If you use AI, you’re not thinking. You’re outsourcing your brain to a machine. You’re lazy, or diminished, or both.

I use AI for almost everything. So I read these posts and I know they’re talking about me.

But here’s what AI actually does for me.

It’s not a shortcut around thinking. It’s the thing that lets me think out loud.

When I’m too tired to hold a sentence together, I say the pieces and the AI holds them until I can see the shape of what I meant.

When my inbox is full and my brain is fog, the AI triages it. I make the decisions. It carries the remembering.

When I log my health data, the AI does the typing. I do the noticing.

When the words won’t come because my body hurts or my brain is done, I say the rough thing and the AI helps me find the words I already had.

None of that means I’m not using my brain. It means I’m using my brain with a tool.

I’m blind. I use a screen reader. Nobody tells me I’m not really reading because a machine reads the words to me. Nobody tells me to just use my eyes.

But when I use AI to write, people tell me I’m not really writing. That I’m not using my brain.

The difference isn’t in what the tool does. The difference is that people have decided one tool is legitimate and the other is cheating.

The people who say “just use your brain” are assuming a brain that works the way theirs does. A brain that can hold a sentence while the body is screaming. A brain that can find words after the fatigue has eaten them.

Not everyone has that brain. I don’t have that brain, not every day, not every hour.

And the thing that lets me write anyway isn’t a failure of thinking. It’s the accommodation that makes thinking possible.

So when I read “I used my fucking brain,” I want to say: so did I.

I used my brain to know what I wanted to say. I used my brain to decide what mattered. I used my brain to catch the parts that were wrong.

The AI didn’t think for me. It held the words while I found them.

That’s not degradation. That’s access.

And I’m not the only one. There are a lot of us. Multiply disabled people who use AI the way we use a screen reader or a wheelchair. As infrastructure. As the thing that lets us do what our bodies and brains can’t do alone.

So please stop assuming we’re not using our brains.

We are. We’re using them harder than you know.