Have you seen the advertisements describing the ”Easy Button?” Hit the button and your solution will be easy. Someone will take care of it for you.
Seeking the easy solution to almost everything must be a part of human nature.
The problem is that while easy offers a short-term solution, it brings with it a long-term problem. The easier our solutions are, the less we grow as a result. The more we rely on something or someone else making it easy for us, the more we retard our own growth. Our development is stunted by the easy solution.
We can understand that in building our physical strength. Going to the gym and lifting weights is hard. But that exercise – doing the hard thing – is necessary if we are going to build our muscles. We could, of course, go to the gym and pay someone else to lift the weight for us. That would be easy, but it would defeat the purpose.
That principle – doing the hard things builds our strengths — applies to the development of our character as well. Taking the easy approach leads to atrophied character traits.
It is hard to take ownership of a mistake, for example, but that is necessary if we are going to develop empathy and a refined conscience. It is hard to get up early in the morning to make it to work on time, but that builds a sense of responsibility, a reputation and a work ethic.
And we’ve all seen young people with no conscience or sense of responsibility due to their parents bailing them out of every untoward situation. When they have never had to deal with a hard thing, they become soft and weak.
While the temptation for the easy solution has always been a part of human existence, we now have a threat to one of our core competencies.
Our ability to think critically, as a species, is one of the attributes that separates us from animals.
Consultant Ben Heirs observed, “The one feature that all the most successful organizations I have been concerned with have shared is, quite simply, the ability to think better than their rivals.”
In my own work with salespeople, sales leaders and chief sales officers, I have often noted that the best and most successful among them simply think better than the rest. Much of my work for decades has been to help people think better.
The growing presence of A.I. now threatens that core competency. The early studies are all indicating the same trend: The more we rely on A.I., the less we think. When we take the ‘easy” solution to a problem by delegating it to A.I. we impinge on our ability to think critically.
Several other studies have noted the inverse relationship between reliance on A.I. and critical thinking. (2)
To put it bluntly, the more we rely on A.I., the stupider and less capable we become.
Critical thinking is the most important of all our human skills, underlying and supporting or ability to live and make decisions. It would an unprecedented shame if our organizations and individuals willfully gave that up in the pursuit of “easy.”
References:
1) The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects from a Survey of Knowledge Workers
- Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee, Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, Nicholas Wilson
CHI 2025 | April 2025
2) To Think or Not to Think: The Impact of AI on Critical-Thinking Skills by Christine Anne Royce, Ed.D. and Valerie Bennett, Ph.D., Ed.D.
A recent study published on Phys.org highlighted a concerning trend: Students who frequently rely on AI tools show lower critical-thinking scores.
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