Studies show AI can dull your thinking skills. Here’s how it can also sharpen them

If AI lives up to its hype and we can “outsource” the thinking, planning, and strategy parts of our jobs, do we risk losing the skills that make us human?

Research from the Center for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability found that there is “a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading.” In other words, use AI too much, and your mental faculties take a nosedive.

But there’s another way to think about the issue. Could AI actually improve our cognition by freeing up our mental bandwidth for higher-value work?

Make time for strategic thinking

I’ve worked at jobs in the past where I’ve begged my boss for the budget to purchase technology that would make work better and easier. If technology could do part of my job for me, I could spend more time on other things, things that typically fell to the bottom of the pile because they didn’t have an instant, tangible result. Thinking strategically about improvements I could make in my department, for example.

I suspect most knowledge workers can relate. We compile reports, attend status meetings, and follow processes with endless tedious tasks. There’s rarely time for higher-level thinking.

While technology improvements may have previously been a “no,” the response to AI has been a resounding “yes.” Perhaps it’s the promise of “10x everything” but CEOs are enamored with the potential of AI. 

AI as sparring partner

For many people, this poses a threat. For others, it can create an opportunity. Farm out the redundant, tedious tasks to AI so we can focus on work that requires our unique expertise.

Take coding, for example. Software can have millions of lines of code, which previously needed to be entered manually. Now, AI can handle much of the repetitive work. Human coders take on the role of orchestrators: the brains behind the operation, guiding AI agents to the correct result.

Personally, I’ve used AI to expand my existing skills. I’m self-employed, so I don’t have any colleagues to bounce ideas off of if I’m stuck. I was working with an app recently, and couldn’t get it to do what I wanted. I turned to ChatGPT and asked for help. ChatGPT gave me incorrect information, which I recognized right away, based on my knowledge of the app.

I prodded ChatGPT again, explaining why the previous answer wouldn’t work. ChatGPT replied, “You’re right! Here are some additional steps you need to take.” The instructions were, again, incorrect. However, the incorrect instructions were enough to spark an idea . . . and my idea worked. 

As a sparring partner, AI let me work through a problem that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to solve on my own (at least not without a significant amount of trial, error, and frustration).

My skills haven’t atrophied because of AI. Quite the opposite: AI takes over some of the boring work, and lets me focus on more creative work—the type of work only a human can do. 

The right use cases

Even if the research currently suggests that AI negatively affects critical thinking abilities, that doesn’t have to be your experience. 

You can find the right use cases to remove the boring and tedious work from your day. Once you do that, use the additional time for impactful work that was always pushed to the back burner. Or spend the time learning something new that could help your career. 

The people who will experience skill atrophy are those who outsource everything to AI—and can’t recognize when work needs human oversight, decision-making, and experience. 

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