AI makes critical thinking more important than ever
I was at a party last weekend and had a couple of conversations with college professors about their use of AI. I was curious how they were dealing with the tools, whether they were embracing them or blocking them. These two were at opposite ends of the spectrum, though interestingly for the same reason. They wanted to encourage their students’ critical-thinking skills, either with the help of the models or without them.
Students develop the basic intellectual building blocks in elementary and high school. College, in my view, is where you learn how to learn and develop independent thought and judgment, regardless of your major. AI seems to offer the siren's song of a shortcut, but in reality, it makes those advanced skills more important than ever.
The anti-AI professor, who works at a Midwestern college, said something that stuck with me. "We are skipping a critical step." What she meant was that students have to learn to assess the value of the answers that the models give them, rather than accepting them at face value. The question is how to do that when it seems so easy just to ask and report.
Her response was to ban it completely, not allowing any electronics in her classroom.
The second professor, from a school on the East Coast, was a bit more pragmatic. The professor encouraged students who wanted to use AI, while letting those who didn't for environmental or other reasons, do the work the old-fashioned way.
Last year, he gave them a bunch of reading assignments, then told them to ask ChatGPT some questions about the content and critique the answers. That worked until students started using Claude to critique ChatGPT. What's a professor to do?
They are both moving back to more oral work, more in-class essays, more blue book exams and group projects. It still leaves the question of how to teach research and writing, a critical academic exercise, while balancing AI (or not).
Getting those reps
Once those students graduate from college and get a job, they are going to need to get the same kind of critical training that only entry-level jobs can provide. This is where they begin to apply those fundamental skills they learned in college, and why a college education remains essential, especially in the age of AI.
As I was thinking about this, I came across this video from marketing guru extraordinaire, Robert Rose. He put into words what the Midwestern professor called, "skipping a step." He calls it formative debt, which he defined as "what accumulates when you skip the experiences that are supposed to shape who you are becoming." What does he mean by that?
Well, each of us, especially those who have been around the block a few times and accumulated some professional scar tissue, has developed a kind of judgment almost without realizing it. For me, it's what constitutes a good story. For Robert, what makes a good marketing campaign. The profession doesn't matter. You have to get your hard knocks before you get good at something. There is no shortcut.
As he said, "You see, doing the work, the friction-filled work, really doing it with all its friction. Well, it leaves a deposit in us, in our perception, in our judgment, in who we are becoming as a professional."
It's why we need an education. It's why we need entry-level jobs where we are allowed to make mistakes, to get knocked down, to feel the sting of failure. It's only through that bitter experience that we get good at something.
AI doesn't offer a replacement for that. On the contrary, it makes those experiences even more important because you have to be able to judge the output, push back when it's wrong, and ultimately find your own way in the world.
~Ron
