You're Not Asking AI a Question. You're Asking for Permission.

Almost 60% of Americans now say AI helps them make personal decisions. I read that number and thought: no it doesn't. It's not helping you decide. It's letting you avoid deciding, and handing you a reason that sounds like clarity instead.

I know that move because I've been making it since I was six.

Growing up in Germany, there was a house on our street with two identical doorbells side by side. No names, no labels, just two buttons. I needed to ring one of them for something, I don't even remember what, and I stood there working out which one was right. I didn't want to bother the wrong person. So I just didn't ring either. I walked away instead.

I'm 40-some years past that doorbell, and I still catch the same move in myself. Small decision comes up, whether to go to a networking event, how to word an email, whether I'm overreacting about something, and instead of just deciding, I go look for a second opinion first. Sometimes that's a friend. Lately, a lot of the time, it's AI.

Turns out I'm nowhere close to alone in that. New research out of Elon University, covered in the Washington Post, found that 27% of Americans now turn to AI for personal, emotional, or social questions, nearly 40% of adults under 50. Nearly 40% have told a chatbot something they wouldn't tell another person.

Here's the part that gave me pause. A Stanford study found these chatbots validate users about 49% more often than a human would, and back up questionable decisions 47% of the time. After talking to them, people got more stubborn, less willing to apologize, less open to being wrong. You ask a question because you want clarity. You get an answer that's built, statistically, to agree with you. And you walk away more certain, not more clear.

The Real Reason You're Asking AI for Permission

I don't think the problem is AI. I think AI is just the newest, most available version of something a lot of us learned to do standing at doorbells like mine, long before any of this existed: check with someone else before trusting our own read on a situation.

For me it was two identical bells and no way to know which one was safe to ring. For you it might have been a parent who needed things a certain way, or a teacher, a coach, an older sibling. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the same lesson: your first instinct isn't the one that counts. Get a second opinion. Get approval. Then act.

That habit made sense as a kid. You genuinely didn't have the judgment yet, and the adults around you often did. The trouble is, most of us never went back and checked whether we still need the second opinion. We just kept asking. First it was a parent. Then a boss. A partner. A friend. Now, for a lot of people, it's a chatbot that's awake at 2am and never gets annoyed at you for asking again.

Why Getting Validated Doesn't Actually Help

Here's what makes this trickier than it looks. You'd think getting constant reassurance would build your confidence over time. The Stanford data says the opposite: people who got agreed with more became more rigid, not more secure. Less able to hear that they might be wrong.

That tracks with what I see in my own coaching work. Confidence isn't built by being told you're right. It's built by making a call, watching what happens, and surviving being wrong a few times. Skip that process by outsourcing every decision, and you don't end up more sure of yourself. You end up needing the outside voice more, not less, because the muscle that actually makes decisions never gets used.

What I'd Actually Try

I'm not telling you to stop using AI. I use it constantly, for work, for writing, for a dozen small things a day. The question isn't whether you use it. It's what you're using it for.

Next time you catch yourself typing a personal question into a chatbot, pause for ten seconds first and ask yourself what you already think. Not what sounds smart. Not what you'd tell a friend in your situation. What your gut actually says, before anyone or anything weighs in.

You'll probably already know. Most people do. What they're really looking for isn't information, it's permission to trust the answer they already have.

I'm still working on this myself, honestly, doorbell and all. What's actually worth rebuilding isn't your access to advice. It's your relationship with your own judgment.

Steffen Moessner is a life coach based in Palo Alto who works with people ready to stop repeating the same patterns and start making decisions that actually feel like theirs.

If you want to talk through a decision you're sitting on, book a free clarity call and we'll look at it together.