The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported (2025)

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.

People have always been bad at critical thinking, it's a high level cognitive skill that requires practice.

Now that it can be outsourced,we will slowly lose this ability that we barely had.

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.

There's often a big gap between self perception and actual performance, I wonder if this actually tracks when measured.

Regardless, confidence in oneself is hardly measured, self report is likely as good as it gets.

I'm beginning to think that AI is just taking Dumbo's magic feather away,

(2025)

and here is a direct link to the pdf without all the rigamarole:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

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

AI atrophies the brain -

https://www.rxjourney.net/how-artificial-intelligence-ai-is-...

"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."

"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

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.

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.

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Claude, please read this article for me and tell me what I should think about it.