Over the past few weeks, I've been reading a lot about AI literacy and how AI is changing the way we think, learn, and work. One study particularly caught my attention.
Researchers at Microsoft Research found that people who have greater confidence in AI tend to engage in less critical thinking. Interestingly, the study also suggests that critical thinking doesn't disappear when we use AI — it shifts. Instead of generating every idea ourselves, we spend more time evaluating, questioning, and refining AI outputs... if we choose to.
And I think that's the key. Right now, most of us aren't choosing to. We've been treating AI as a machine that thinks for us. It should be a machine that thinks with us. Those are two very different things.
When we ask AI to write an email, summarize a meeting, solve a problem, or make a decision, we're often outsourcing the thinking itself. Sometimes that's exactly what we want. But if it becomes our default mode, we stop exercising the very cognitive muscles we're trying to augment.
Lately, I've been adding one sentence to almost every prompt:
"Act as my critical thinking partner. Challenge my assumptions. Don't optimize for agreeing with me."
The conversations become much more interesting. Less validation and more thinking.
Study: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...