Personally, I've done more critical thinking in the past 2 years than the rest of my life combined.
Early LLMs spit out easily identifiable nonsense. Now, it's much more subtle, but it's still absolutely everywhere, even with the best models.
You have to constantly be on your toes to detect it. Some people won't, but I suspect that's mostly the people who were never capable of critical thinking anyways. I'd say it's an upgrade if those people blindly trust an AI over some random person on the internet like they did previously.
It’s also great for testing your own arguments. I will regularly ask Claude, “Is this factual? What are the strongest criticisms?” about something I am about to say. More often than not, I will at least tweak a comment, or sometimes even realize I am completely wrong before posting publicly.
Anecdotally, does this match anyone's actual experience?
Everyone I know who is working closely with LLMs is doing some of the most acute critical thinking of their lives these days.
I'm very skeptical of these kinds of takes; I'm reminded that Socrates railed against books on the basis that they were going to rot the brains of the youth.
There's people who use it as a tool, and there's people who use it as a brain surrogate. Most of the people using it as the latter aren't people who were deep thinkers to begin with.
I always compare it to satnav: how many people bother checking maps and figuring out the route to go anywhere nowadays, just punch it into your satnav and hit "Go!". It'll get you there, but when there are unexpected things some people do panic, or even turn into roads that are actually rivers, etc.
Or course "everyone you know" might be doing something different, but AI is offering the same delegation possibilities for critical thinking. Do you think there won't be people who'll do the equivalent of driving into the river when using AI?
I'm either not seeing something or I do not see the point of this study.
Amount of "critical thinking" is basically amount of oversight, no? What's interesting is when the amount of oversight is inappropriate, leading to overconfidence in bad results (or, if too much oversight, lack of efficiency).
This paper does not seem to discuss results and correctness at all, ONLY the amount of critical thinking.
Critical thinking is actually something that people exercise (or don't) all the time. It is a skill and practice that is inarguably valuable in all situations. This paper is not about the effects of critical thinking on "AI results", but the exact inverse of that.
Do you value the capacity for critical thinking in yourself? In others? If so, the effect reported by this paper is probably of interest to you.
Using AI is similar to delegating a task to another person. Are the brains of all managers atrophied? Some people might think so but really you just learn different skills. Better communication, strategic thinking, etc
In the eyes of the ruling class: it's a feature, not a bug.
If students in the public k-12 system were actually being taught critical thinking, the schools would be the targets of strategic bombing by the US military.
But ai chats are brilliant places to practice your thinking. It is a like a human with zero ego, so just gives you counterexamples to what you said, without any care to your feelings. It tells you your novel idea was written down by some thinker 100 years ago, and doesn't care about the crestfallen look on your face. You can use this to strengthen your argument, it will tell you when you did, and when you just did the opposite. It doesn't care if you change places and argue from the other side either. Or if you say, I feel like x is true but could this just be my bias from years of y, it argues back.
To try, go and type a weakly argued point into Claude and watch it take you apart. Try these:
People only post on hn for the pathetic dopamine hit of upvotes
Hn comments are getting weaker
James Acaster is the best commedian of the last 200 years.
Your challenge is to turn it into an argument strong enough to not get an instant rejection
"Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking." - that's just the Dunning-Kruger effect
Anecdotally, I'm more bought into the amplifier theory [0], As it matches what I've seen with other people who I work with closely, and have known since pre-ai.
They found that traditional metrics like critical thinking, AI literacy, and domain knowledge did not predict who became an amplifier.
I think the bigger issue is skipping the process through which you learn. Personally I learn the most when I am stuck on something for hours trying to figure it out and I miss all of that when AI gives a solution right away.
You get more done without realising you're learning less.
> You get more done without realising you're learning less
Unfortunately, I think many folks now just don't place any value on learning or knowing things because they can "just ask AI".
That's probably my biggest fear with AI is that people just don't see any value to knowing things anymore. And quite ironically, AI is amazing for learning new things.
"We surveyed 319 knowledge workers who use GenAI tools (e.g.,
ChatGPT, Copilot) at work at least once per week, to model how
they enact critical thinking when using GenAI tools, and how GenAI
affects their perceived effort of thinking critically. Analysing 936
real-world GenAI tool use examples our participants shared, we
find that knowledge workers engage in critical thinking primarily
to ensure the quality of their work, e.g. by verifying outputs against
external sources. Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill
for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s
ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort.
When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking
shifts from information gathering to information verification; from
problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execution to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges
in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge
workflows. To that end, our work suggests that GenAI tools need
to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by
addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers."
28 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 16.3 ms ] threadand here is a direct link to the pdf without all the rigamarole:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
Now that it can be outsourced,we will slowly lose this ability that we barely had.
Early LLMs spit out easily identifiable nonsense. Now, it's much more subtle, but it's still absolutely everywhere, even with the best models.
You have to constantly be on your toes to detect it. Some people won't, but I suspect that's mostly the people who were never capable of critical thinking anyways. I'd say it's an upgrade if those people blindly trust an AI over some random person on the internet like they did previously.
Regardless, confidence in oneself is hardly measured, self report is likely as good as it gets.
Everyone I know who is working closely with LLMs is doing some of the most acute critical thinking of their lives these days.
I'm very skeptical of these kinds of takes; I'm reminded that Socrates railed against books on the basis that they were going to rot the brains of the youth.
Geometry existed for centuries before Euclid's formalization. Similar for algebra before Al'Khwarizmi. People were using logic before Boole.
"External Intelligence" is not new. But we are still in the informal stage of LLM use.
Or course "everyone you know" might be doing something different, but AI is offering the same delegation possibilities for critical thinking. Do you think there won't be people who'll do the equivalent of driving into the river when using AI?
Amount of "critical thinking" is basically amount of oversight, no? What's interesting is when the amount of oversight is inappropriate, leading to overconfidence in bad results (or, if too much oversight, lack of efficiency).
This paper does not seem to discuss results and correctness at all, ONLY the amount of critical thinking.
Critical thinking is actually something that people exercise (or don't) all the time. It is a skill and practice that is inarguably valuable in all situations. This paper is not about the effects of critical thinking on "AI results", but the exact inverse of that.
Do you value the capacity for critical thinking in yourself? In others? If so, the effect reported by this paper is probably of interest to you.
https://www.rxjourney.net/how-artificial-intelligence-ai-is-...
If students in the public k-12 system were actually being taught critical thinking, the schools would be the targets of strategic bombing by the US military.
To try, go and type a weakly argued point into Claude and watch it take you apart. Try these:
People only post on hn for the pathetic dopamine hit of upvotes
Hn comments are getting weaker
James Acaster is the best commedian of the last 200 years.
Your challenge is to turn it into an argument strong enough to not get an instant rejection
They found that traditional metrics like critical thinking, AI literacy, and domain knowledge did not predict who became an amplifier.
[0] https://hbr.org/2026/07/research-why-some-junior-employees-w...
You get more done without realising you're learning less.
Unfortunately, I think many folks now just don't place any value on learning or knowing things because they can "just ask AI".
That's probably my biggest fear with AI is that people just don't see any value to knowing things anymore. And quite ironically, AI is amazing for learning new things.