Critical thinking with AI

Thoughts on AI effect on critical thinking and deep focused work

Traps

AI can definitely make us faster, but it also enables us to fall into bad traps as well. Espically for those already vulnerable to these (EG students, juniors, people with adhd …)

As developers to deliver high quality technical solutions, we need to apply core critical thinking skills, problem is that AI can provide some level of deep thinking allowing many of us to get lazy and let our own critical thinking skills slip. For some of the younger crowd AI may of ment not practising these skills much at all leading to a lack of a solid foundation.

Its not just humans being lazy here though, general mindset of with AI we should get things done twice as fast. Leads to traps like this, increased poor work hygiene, and less time to actually spend developing a base of knowledge. Increased avaliability of AI has not helped here.

So what are these skills?

• brainstorming: thinking in questions, coming up with ideas from nothing
• abstraction: looking at the big picture and then narrowing down to specific areas
• problem solving: break a big problem up into pieces, work through step by step
• learning: actually taking time to really understand things so our understanding can help us do better work and develop
• deep focus: ability to really deeply thinking about a problem and apply the other skills
• others I’ve missed …

So is AI the devil here? Do we just not use it? Of course the answer is no, AI is actually a extremely powerful and useful tool once used correctly and not as a crutch. Some simple guidelines can really help us here, and it is important to think deeply independantly instead of defaulting to AI every time, but we can also implement these skills and use AI to do them even better.

Solutions

I think the best answer here is a mix of

• general mindfullness tips for working // avoid getting lazy and letting AI take over, also good for general work health and performance
• some simple guidelines for prompting AI smartly
• figuring when to use AI and when to not

For example

• implement mindfullness breaks: take 5 minute breaks to think
  • do these routinely and/or whenever you notice poor hygiene / general work quality signs
  • what should I be working on now: whats my highest priority
  • am I critical thinking / doing my best work
  • am I tired should I take a break
• rather than just prompting AI mindlessly
  • slow down
  • take the time to ask more questions to really understand answers, this helps to learn as well as just make sure answers are correct
• take some time to work independant of AI, EG
  • traditional critical thinking skills with notepad or any text software
  • make sure to spend some time reading and understanding actual code files themselves