If we replace AI with the internet, I think that we might get a answer which is hopefully nuanced.
What did the internet gave us: well it gave us researchers who could collaborate with each other instantly and research journals and so much research data which can be used with data science to give us so many beautiful gifts of life. Truly what a wonderful world we live in. Teachers can connect to students and teach online and information has no limits, no boundaries. (Could AI perhaps help in that just as much)
Yet at the same time, Internet has introduced us to Social media, it has made us all feel insecure about our bodies, our financials and always wanting to one-up each other. It has created addictions, it has created so many problems with big tech exploiting us (Meta famously tracks if a young girl deletes her selfie, that means she's insecure and so it would show them predatory makeup/body ads), (would AI feed on our insecurity?)
What a treachorous world we live in. Everyone doom-scrolling to eternity with seemingly no hope.
before AI, we were already inside doom-scrolling, I mean Tiktok was the fad before AI really and it asks the same question as in: are people getting dumber too.
realisitically, I like to think that there's a societal resistance to change (which is a good thing IMO), Trillions are flowing into AI for any use-case, good or bad, no matter what to figure out this black box technology. a16z has some thoughts about not ever introspecting every in life so there is something... This is the effect of so much money flowing that some dumbness exists. Within Society, we have lost meaning and connection for what its worth in some aspects of it so money is the thing which has gotten the most outsized example.
Epstein is the example of it. Billionaires raping young girls yet as a society we are still not giving them proper justice. Aren't we as a society doomed or dumb enough then. This is dumbness in my opinion just as much if not more.
Coming back to the point regarding AI, as a society we would have some filters so the idea of idiocracy might not be so much there. People are getting into pschosis which is causing them to be dumb. its tricking into our emotions of feeling connected because Linear Algebra is getting good at predicting words similar to how humans speak.
Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems really. AI fad will wore off in terms of internet fad, Its unclear to me and nobody (including domain specific experts) can really predict the future as such, as much as you might like to think of the future, sadly its hard to predict or then account for it. We don't know what's in the future and perhaps that's where the joy or the sadness is as we live in this journey of world and people we meet in it.