Why Struggle Matters: What AI Gets Wrong About Making Life Easier
Last Updated on September 10, 2026
There is something quietly thought-provoking happening in the world of AI research, and it deserves more attention than it is getting. A group of psychologists from the University of Toronto has published a commentary with a somewhat provocative premise: that AI making our lives easier might actually be making us weaker, less skilled, and less fulfilled. Their paper, titled Against Frictionless AI, argues that the effort, difficulty, and even discomfort we experience when tackling a problem is not a bug in the human experience. It is a feature.
The researchers, led by PhD student Emily Zohar alongside renowned psychologists Paul Bloom and Michael Inzlicht, introduce the concept of “productive friction.” The idea is straightforward but powerful. When we struggle through a challenge and come out the other side, we learn more deeply, remember more clearly, and feel a genuine sense of achievement. When AI simply hands us the finished product, we skip all of that. We get the answer without the journey. And according to this research, the journey is the point.
This is not an argument against AI. It is a call for more thoughtful AI design.
What makes this research especially relevant for people who have lived through a few decades of technological change is the distinction the researchers draw between AI and every previous labour-saving tool. Washing machines freed us from scrubbing clothes by hand. Calculators removed the drudgery of long arithmetic. Spellcheck caught our typos. None of those things touched the processes that make us who we are. But AI is now reaching into our creative thinking, our writing, our problem-solving, and even our social relationships. That is genuinely new territory.
Zohar offers a memorable illustration of the difference. Imagine taking a chairlift to the top of a mountain versus hiking it. Both get you to the summit. But only one of them builds fitness, resilience, and a lasting sense of accomplishment.
In her own words: “AI is taking away effort from creative and cognitive processes that drive meaning, motivation, and learning. That’s a key difference, because it’s not taking away friction from tasks that don’t serve us. It’s taking away friction from experiences that are really important and integral to our development.”
The researchers are not asking us to give up AI. They are asking developers and users alike to think about what a more constructive default might look like. Instead of AI jumping straight to the answer, what if it guided you through the thinking process? Less search engine, more thoughtful mentor.
For anyone who has spent a lifetime building skills, navigating relationships, and earning wisdom through experience, this research will likely resonate on a personal level. It puts science behind something many people have sensed intuitively: that doing things the hard way is often the better way.
Read the full article at IEEE Spectrum and decide for yourself just how much help is too much: https://spectrum.ieee.org/frictionless-ai-psychology
