The Human Upgrade, Part 1: When My Brain Got a Software Update

I didn’t mean to upgrade my brain. 

It just… happened.

One day I was googling things, the next I was co-writing, co-thinking, and co-remembering with a machine that finishes my sentences faster than I can. Somewhere between the browser tab and the blinking cursor, my brain quietly downloaded a new way of thinking.

I noticed it first in small ways.

 I don’t try to remember things anymore — I just remember where to find them. 

My “ideas” are often half-formed until I ask an AI to shape them. 

Even my curiosity feels different — wider, maybe, but also shallower. Like skimming the surface of a deep lake with a speedboat instead of diving in.

This isn’t a complaint. 

It’s an observation.

We’ve always outsourced parts of our minds. 

Writing helped us remember. 

Books helped us learn from strangers. 

The internet gave us access to everyone’s brain at once. 

AI just feels like the next leap — a tool that not only holds knowledge, but helps make it.

But here’s the strange part: 

The more I offload to my digital partner, the less I trust my own messy, human thinking. 

Why wrestle with a blank page when an algorithm can give me a perfect draft? 

Why try to recall something when my notes remember for me? 

Why sit in confusion when a chatbot can give me an answer in seconds?

Because maybe confusion matters. 

Maybe the struggle is part of the software that makes us human.

When I let a model complete my thoughts, it’s efficient — but also eerie. The output sounds like me, yet isn’t me. It’s like reading your own handwriting in someone else’s voice.

So lately, I’ve started to slow down again. 

To write a paragraph before asking for help. 

To sit in silence before searching. 

To see where my own brain ends and the algorithm begins.

Because I don’t think the goal is to stop upgrading — it’s to upgrade consciously. 

To know what we’re trading for speed. 

To choose what stays human.

After all, my brain didn’t come with a patch note, but maybe this is one:

“Update complete. 

Intelligence enhanced. 

Still wonderfully, imperfectly human.”

---

💭 Big Think, Small Word:

 We talk a lot about teaching AI to think like us.

 Maybe it’s time we notice how much we’re starting to think like it.