Are we outsourcing our thinking?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on a recent presentation to the US Senate by neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath. Not entirely sure how it appeared in my Instagram feed, but glad it did! The presentation explored the potential cognitive impact of increasing technology use in education. With unprecedented access to digital tools in schools, there’s growing evidence of declining attention, comprehension and reasoning skills amongst younger generations.

Whether you agree with Dr Horvath’s conclusions or not, it raises an important parallel for organisations rapidly deploying AI in the workplace.

Are we sufficiently considering the long-term cognitive implications of AI augmentation in the workforce? Could we unintentionally allow future generations entering the workplace to become less capable thinkers?

AI is already helping employees draft e-mails, create reports, summarise meetings, write code, analyse data and make decisions faster than ever before. Used well, this can be transformational. But there’s an uncomfortable question sitting beneath the surface. If people increasingly rely on AI to perform core thinking tasks, what happens to the development and retention of those human capabilities over time?

Technology has always helped to reduce manual effort. AI may increasingly reduce cognitive effort as well.

I’m not suggesting AI is harmful. Quite the opposite. I genuinely believe it has the potential to become one of the most valuable productivity tools we’ve ever created. However, ethical deployment can’t simply focus on security, privacy, bias and compliance. We also need to think about preserving human capability.

In many organisations, AI adoption is racing ahead of AI literacy. Employees are being encouraged, or choosing, to use generative AI tools before organisations have fully considered the critical thinking skills required to validate outputs, challenge assumptions, recognise hallucinations or maintain deep subject understanding.

Perhaps the future challenge for leaders isn’t whether employees use AI, but whether they can still think effectively without it.

We may need to consider:

• Teaching AI literacy alongside critical thinking

• Positioning AI as a human aid and not a replacement

• Encouraging challenge and verification of AI generated outputs

• Creating opportunities for independent problem solving

• Measuring whether productivity gains are unintentionally reducing human capability over time

One principle repeatedly discussed during my studies in AI ethics, regulation and compliance was that technology should augment human value rather than replace it.

The question may not be whether AI makes organisations more efficient. The bigger question may be whether it leaves organisations intellectually weaker in the long term.

If so, is that acceptable?

Worth a conversation?

Link to original LinkedIn post