Dr. Gianluca Abela – Academic Manager, Ascencia Malta Business School

Amid the feverish worship of artificial intelligence, we have succumbed to a dangerous delusion: that human natural intelligence, once the crown jewel of civilisation, is somehow inexhaustible, or at worst merely malleable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Natural intelligence is rotting before our eyes, gnawed away by digital distraction, intellectual laziness, and an insidious dependency on machines. This decay is no trivial academic concern. It is an existential threat to empathy and emotional intelligence—the very qualities that distinguish humans from cold, calculating machines.

To witness this decay is to see the slow disintegration of what makes us human. Our minds have been outsourced to screens and algorithms, turning reflection into instant gratification and deep thinking into a relic. This digital infantilisation breeds a generation infantilised not just cognitively, but emotionally—incapable of real empathy because they never bothered to nurture it. Empathy is no mere sentimental add-on. It requires effort, imagination, and moral memory—faculties starved by the relentless dopamine hits of social media and the intellectual passivity it induces.

The death knell for emotional intelligence sounds with three ominous strokes. First, imagination falters. Genuine empathy demands we vividly inhabit another’s world, yet the contemporary psyche can barely sustain its own attention long enough to manage that. Second, memory collapses. We forget personal and collective pain, erasing the foundation of compassion under the rubble of technological outsourcing. Third, dialogue dies. The art of genuine, challenging conversation is replaced by echo chambers and curated digital feeds, dulling the emotional friction essential for humane connection.

This decay of natural intelligence is not a minor academic quibble—it is a brutal dismantling of the ethical core of society. A culture losing its capacity for critical thought inevitably loses its ability to care profoundly. The seductive convenience of cognitive outsourcing comes at a catastrophic price: the erosion of empathy itself.

We stand at a crossroads. To cling blindly to technological expediency is to accept a future where emotional intelligence is a quaint relic—replaced by hollow, algorithm-simulated sociality. The remedy is radical: reclaiming our intellectual agency through education that prizes deep thought, reflective silence, and difficult dialogues. We must reject the false premise that efficiency justifies emotional numbness.

If we fail, humanity will not be undone by the rise of machines, but by our own willing abdication of the faculties that define us. As natural intelligence decays, empathy dies in silence—and with it, the soul of civilisation.