My AI brain is not braining

I used to code pretty well, but after using LLMs a lot, I feel like I lost some of my ability to think and code independently.

I realized this and decided to stop depending on coding agents. I even switched off auto-suggestions. It was really hard at first, but now at least I can code without AI again.

My problem now is with R&D. I’m building a database in Rust, and I often don’t know where to start researching. What I’ve been doing is asking AI what the next step should be. It gives me a roadmap, and then I try to understand and implement it myself.

Is this actually a good approach?

Basically, I’m not finding articles and resources about the things I’m searching for like I used to. I’m wondering whether that’s because the availability of information has changed, or because AI has made it so easy to get an answer that I’ve become less willing to dig through articles, documentation, GitHub repos, papers, etc.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is the convenience of AI actually making us worse at research?