Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What happens when we start to let AI think for us? It's a big question right now. And is it actually making us smarter and more efficient? Or is it hindering our ability to think critically?
In this talk, Advett Sarkar, a researcher at Microsoft, examines the cognitive trade-offs of AI at work and sketches a different kind of tool, one that promotes critical thinking and nudges reflection to help you get smarter and not just faster.
I'm here today to talk about thinking for yourself. And I must admit, I did use AI to help me think about it. The irony is not lost on me. But the way I did so is not by using AI as an assistant to help me prepare this talk faster. Rather, I use AI as a tool for thought.
And by the end of this talk, I will have explained what I mean by that, why it's important, and given you a glimpse of how it might work. But first, I need to set the scene.
Chapter 2: What happens when we start to let AI think for us?
Let's look at a day in the life of a 21st century knowledge worker. I arrive at my office and look at my inbox full of emails. Let's summarize it. Okay, I'm struggling to figure out how to respond here, so let's get AI to write a response. Next, I need to write a report, but I'm struck by the blank page problem.
Chapter 3: Is AI making us smarter or hindering our critical thinking?
I know, I'll drop in some resources and get an AI draft. Looks good to me. By the way, the writer's block used to be staring at a blank page. Now it's staring at a page that AI filled out for me and wondering if I agree with it. I've become a professional validator of a robot's opinions. I've got some data to analyze. Maybe AI can analyze this data for me. Probably correct.
Okay, I've got to make a deck as well. You know the drill. All right, oh, I was supposed to prototype something as well. Let me vibe code something. All right. All this looks good. Let's go. This isn't a vision of the future. This is a completely plausible, if slightly exaggerated, picture of the world of knowledge work today.
Welcome to the age of outsourced reason, where the knowledge worker no longer engages with the materials of their craft. We've become intellectual tourists. In our own work, we visit ideas. We don't inhabit them. Our relationship to our work is entirely intermediated by AI. Some might say alienated. We've heard that story before.
What I want to focus on today is that using AI in this way can have profound implications on human thought. Consider creativity. On an individual level, we might think that AI is a creativity boost, giving us rapid access to new ideas. But numerous studies have shown that on a collective level, knowledge workers using AI assistance produce a smaller range of ideas than a group working manually.
We've created a hive mind, except the hive is really boring and keeps suggesting the same five ideas.
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Chapter 4: How has AI changed the daily life of knowledge workers?
Consider critical thinking. We surveyed knowledge workers about their use of AI. They reported that they put less effort into critical thinking when working with AI than when working manually. And this fact was greater when they had greater confidence in AI and less confidence in themselves. Consider memory. When people rely on AI to write for them, they remember less of what they wrote.
And when they read AI-generated summaries, it's hardly surprising that they remember less than if they'd read the document. And finally, consider metacognition, which is the ability to think about your own thinking process. Working with AI requires significant metacognitive reasoning about your task goals, decomposing the task, the applicability of Gen AI, your ability to evaluate the output.
These are things which are built into the process of working directly with the material and which become problematic when that material engagement becomes intermediated. Basically, we've become middle managers for our own thoughts. So what's the score? We have fewer ideas, we think about them less critically, we remember them less well, and we have a harder time doing it.
Taken together, we can see that AI-assisted workflows can have profound effects on human thinking.
And this extends even to seemingly trivial, mundane tasks because these everyday opportunities for exercising our creativity, our critical thinking, and our memory are essential for protecting our cognitive musculature and allow us to rise to the occasion when an exceptionally complex task comes our way. Studies show that when we don't use our brains, they get worse at brain things.
Nobel Prize Committee, please hold your applause. Is this the cost of progress? We've solved the problem of having to think. Unfortunately, thinking wasn't actually a problem. It's like we invented a cure for exercise and then wondered why we're out of breath all the time. It doesn't have to be this way. Beyond AI as an assistant, I believe that AI should be a tool for thought.
AI should challenge, not obey. And I believe that right at this moment, we are at a critical juncture where the world of work is poised to be transformed by generative AI. And we must act now to shape and drive that transformation towards humanistic values. Of these two diverging roads, we must take the one less traveled. Beyond getting the job done,
A tool for thought helps us better understand the job. Beyond getting it done faster, it helps us get it done better. Beyond getting us to the right answers, a tool for thought helps us ask the right questions. Beyond automating known processes, it helps us explore the unknown. What does this look like?
What I'm about to show you is a prototype developed by my colleagues and me at the Tools for Thought team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. Now please bear in mind that this is a live research prototype. It's not a product. And it's just one of a series of explorations that our team is conducting to study how different modes of working with AI can enhance human thought.
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