Can AI make us better thinkers?
Can AI make us better thinkers?
The media narrative on AI has been mainly about if and when it will take our jobs.
That's a black-and-white and incomplete picture.
It overlooks a more relevant question: How can AI amplify our thinking and impact? Could AI lead to a leap in our thinking?
I've noticed four ways in which AI can expand our thinking:
1. Facilitate new questions
Discussions with tools like ChatGPT can help us ask novel and more refined questions.
According to a new study, "engagement with AI led respondents to ask different questions than they otherwise would have 94% of the time." Leaders could tap into the AI to ask "farther-ranging questions and explore new ideas." (Gregersen & Morini, HBR 2023)
Of course, AI's ability to help us generate meaningful and productive questions still depends on the framing and guidance of our thinking.
2. Unveil hidden insights
Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, enable us to delve into unstructured data, uncovering new insights. These tools offer the potential to converse with the collective public wisdom of humanity.
With advancements like ChatGPT plug-ins, anyone can now sift through their massive unstructured datasets, like public online customer comments, and discern new patterns. For example, Youtuber and AI researcher David Shapiro shared how he used ChatGPT to analyze all comments on his videos to uncover ideas for video topics.
3. Challenge Our Thinking
If you engage in open-minded dialogue with AI, you can use it to challenge your thinking.
For example, I fed an earlier version of this text to ChatGPT and asked it to find gaps in the reasoning. The AI provided several viewpoints around bias and overreliance on AI that was missing in my thinking. ChatGPT also helped me distill the main points in a more precise way.
It's essential to take all input from AI with a grain of salt - as they can be biased or create echo chambers.
4. Ideate innovative solutions
Better insights and questions can help us ideate new solutions with AI.
For example, researchers at Colgate-Palmolive used AI to understand how charcoal became so popular in consumer products. They used this understanding to envision new trends in materials and what could emerge as the new unexpected "charcoal" for household products.
Throughout history, we've used innovations like writing, calculators, and computers to expand our thinking. It's exciting to see how we'll put AI to use in the same way.
Balancing the flaws of AI
Like any technology, AI is imperfect. It's by nature backward-looking and biased by its learning data. It also doesn't have built-in notions of ethics or values.
We should balance AI's flaws with safeguards, legislation, company policies, and our thinking guided by humanistic values.
We must also avoid overreliance on AI in our thinking. It can be risky to use AI to substitute our critical reasoning.
Our most significant opportunity is to use AI to expand and amplify our thinking - not replace it.
For more on this, I recommend reading the HBR article mentioned above (AI Can Help You Ask Better Questions, HBR 2023).
