Two recent articles point to something subtle but significant unfolding in our relationship with artificial intelligence. In Rolling Stone, writer Miles Klee critiques the growing presence of AI with a cultural skepticism that’s hard to ignore. He paints it as theater—flashy, convenient, and uncomfortably hollow. In contrast, my own post in Psychology Today offers a different but related view that AI, especially large language models (LLMs), present what I call cognitive theater—an elegant performance of intelligence that feels real, even when it isn’t. Klee questions the cultural spectacle. I question the cognitive seduction. Both perspectives point to the same deeper truth that is as fascinating as it is concerning.

I see it almost every day. Smart, thoughtful people become wide-eyed and breathless when an AI tool mimics something clever, or poetic, or eerily human. There’s often a moment of awe, followed quickly by a kind of surrender.

This isn’t gullibility, it’s enchantment. And I understand it. I’ve felt it too. But part of my job now—part of all of our jobs—is to gently pull people back from that edge. Not to diminish the wonder, but to restore the context. To remind ourselves that beneath the magic is machinery. Beneath the fluency, prediction. And that if we mistake performance for presence, we may forfeit something essential—our own capacity to think with intention.

The Performance of Thought
Today’s AI doesn’t think in any traditional sense. It doesn’t understand what it says or intend what it outputs. And yet, it speaks with remarkable fluency, mimicking the cadence, tone, and structure of our real thoughts. That’s not a bug—it’s the design. Large language models operate through statistical prediction. They draw on enormous datasets to generate text that fits the prompt, the moment, and often the emotion of the exchange.

But here’s the catch, the more convincing the performance, the more likely we are to suspend disbelief. We hear intelligence. We project understanding. And over time, the line between real and rendered cognition begins to blur.