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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