Chapters
00:00
Introduction to Critical Thinking in the AI Workplace
02:53
Understanding Critical Thinking Components
06:08
The Role of AI in Enhancing Critical Thinking
08:59
Practical Approaches to Critical Thinking
11:48
Balancing Critical Thinking and Productivity
15:13
Fostering a Culture of Critical Thinking
17:55
Conclusion: The Future of Critical Thinking in Workplaces
Welcome everyone to the Humans and AI in the Workplace podcast. Over the last few years, it's become clear that artificial intelligence, AI, is one of the most impactful and disruptive transformations in the workplace. As a leader, you may be wondering how to get started and how to do it in an intelligent way. Or you may be stuck on how to overcome some of the people issues and human bottlenecks your AI has crashed into.
We are here with Dr. Debra Panipucci and Leisa Hart from AI Adaptive to discuss today's topic, critical thinking skills in the workplace. The ability to think critically is an invaluable skill that is increasingly more important as we engage with AI in the workplace, as it transcends subject-specific knowledge and is the new core skill that humans need to succeed.
And we're going to dig into this today because it's such a hot topic and one that's been thrown around a lot. you just need critical thinking skills. What does that actually mean? good question. So for me, it's about looking at the work that's in front of you, whether it's metrics or piece of text or a document that you've just created or somebody else has created or AI has created and being able to think about it at a higher level around what experience does this create? What message does this send? How does this fit within the coherence of everything else that exists to really critically analyze and think about how things work together and how they don't work together. So you're not just reporting back something that you've seen and done in the past. I think about it as kind of five things. It's objectivity, analytical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, and also reflective thinking. So for me, that's all part of the critical thinking. It's those different elements that come to play. I like it. The only challenge I would put is problem solving because maybe there's not a problem.
But I think there's a component there around being able to bring that systems thinking in terms of what are the drivers for this. And if we influenced or changed some of those drivers, would that change the outcome result? So I wouldn't frame it as problem solving, but maybe it's that systems thinking or that root cause analysis or that solution or something that's a bit broader than just a problem. Or that optimization. Yeah. Opportunity or the challenge. Optimization thinking. Yeah. Yeah, let's, let's own that. Part of the reason for doing this episode on critical thinking is because it's, it's, it's often just a throwaway term. It's like, you just, you just need people to have critical thinking skills. Well, you're making a big assumption that everyone knows what it is.
And it's a whole bunch of things. So how do you help people access the components of that in the moment in their work? And it's a skill that is going to be more and more valuable as we move towards that future workplace. Because as more intelligent technology comes into organizations, we all know that machine learning and AI algorithms can consume much larger data sources than your human employees. So, you know, there's so many different data sources that AI can use to create a recommendation, whereas your human employees might just use two or three factors to make their decision. And so as AI comes in and provides greater recommendations and predictions and analysis, your employees are going to have their capacity freed up.
because they no longer need to do that lower level work. They can now do more of that higher level, higher value add critical thinking. One of the most important, I think, aspects of critical thinking is your willingness to check in and test your own assumptions about what decisions you've made. Because we've seen so often to social media as an example, people being fed information based on an algorithm that takes them down, you know, the infamous rabbit hole.
Leisa Hart (04:44.746)
and need in organizations when your people are using large language models, generative AI for input to their work, not output, but input, you need them to be able to stop and check, well, what assumptions did I make when I wrote that prompt in the first place? Is that something that I got or is it something that I'm just assuming? And is that right? I'll give you an example. I was using one of the large.
language models publicly available for some research, for an event, for some statistics. I was very specific about the type of statistics I wanted. I wanted the references and the sources from the statistics that it gave me. And my initial assumption was, well, because it's given me the references, they must be right. I checked, I went and checked and tried to find the sources and two out of three were not.
And I'd made an assumption that because I'd asked for the references and the sources that those statistics would be real. And it kind of really pushed me back a little bit because I think that's a fair assumption. You go, and it's that critical thinking coming to the fore to go, well, is this really real? Even though it says it's real, is it really real? So then that also challenges the productivity gains that can be achieved when you're looking at
putting in place a copilot or a document search agent into your organization and the AI is supposed to search through everything and provide back the answers from those documents, but not in a reiterative, like a Google search where it just gives you the exact reference and the location. AI is designed to consume the large amount of data and then consolidate it into an answer.
for you, so it's creating an answer. And so it's being able to keep in mind and critically check, is this answer still relevant? Which if you need to go back to the source in your document, you might as well have just done that in the first place. So it's for leaders, it's how do you train your AI to be able to provide the data that hasn't created inaccuracies or hallucinations when it's merged together, different data points from across different sources. Because you need to be able to trust the algorithms to give me what I need. And because I've got to run, I want that productivity. I want it to quickly serve me the outcome that I need. That's right. Which also includes you need to have time and space to check for biases. So if you are running and you're thinking you're using the AI to fast track things, then you need to have also the space to be able to check ethical implications that could come out or misinterpretations of the information. It's another great opportunity to tap into diversity of thinking in the organisation because the way that I think about and critically think about things is different to the way that you do. And that's one of the reasons we work so well together is because we have those different lenses and we come to it with our own special way of thinking about something. So you've got to have the mechanisms in place for people to check in with people who don't think like them. To get a better understanding of critical thinking, I just want to talk through some of the different thought processes that you work through when you're engaging in critical thinking. So first, we call it making connections.
And it's when you take the information that's in front of you, it could be a metric, a report, or something that someone's written. And you think about how it links to other things you know that's going on in the business or in the industry. For instance, perhaps you're looking at call rates and they're down in your sales team. And you start to think through, what do you know is happening in the business or in the team or in the context? that could connect to these sales rates being down? Is there a lot of road works and construction on their sales call route that could slow down their transit between calls? Or has there been a resignation in their team that has presented the need to cover extra workload? You know, there's a number of things that you can think through that could actually link to the information that's in front of you beyond what the actual metric or report or information is telling you. Another thought process within critical thinking is to contrast and compare. So this is about looking at the information in front of you and thinking through how is this different to last month? What about this time last year? What about last week? And then following your contrast and compare analysis, you could move into a thought process of predicting you know, what do you expect next month to look like? Or based on what has happened in the past, when you saw information like this, what happened next? So what are your expectations when you look at this information in front of you? Now, a fourth and final thought process that I'm going to talk about here, you can visit our AI Adaptive Knowledge Center if you want more information on the different types of thought processes within critical thinking.
But I really want to zone in on one last one here, and that's what we call incongruence. And it's when you look at the information in front of you and you start to analyze and assess what is incongruent or doesn't fit with what you would expect to see. So what just isn't right in what the information in front of you is telling you, what just isn't right and poses more questions or areas that you feel need to be further explored. And you could easily have some structured questions as well to get people to think, okay, are we thinking objectively about this? Or am I thinking objectively about a prompted copilot for something? Sit back, take a minute. It might be that you attach it to take a sip of water while you're thinking, while you're having a drink, think about, okay, right. What has this given me? Is this?
Is this real? What's the purpose of this? Is it going to give me the answer? Is it something that is just giving me an answer that I want versus something that I need to adapt to contextualize it to the solution that I need or the environment that I'm in or the customer outcome I'm trying to achieve. think they're the types of things that you could encourage your team to do in the moment. it starts with asking questions like why? Why do we have this answer? Why are we getting this result in our metrics? What could we do differently? If we changed any of those inputs, either dialed them up or dialed them down, how would that change the outcome? Because we know that intelligent technology now is the worst it will be. Like every day it's improving. So the more We can bring our critical thinking skills to our interactions with it and what we get from it. The faster we will help it get better as well. The more we'll train it. The more we'll train it to deliver better outcomes, hopefully less bias, hopefully more accuracy, hopefully different solutions over time. I just need to bring fresh eyes to it, don't you? Part of critically thinking about something is... It's a higher order activity.
a higher order thought process which takes intention and it takes deep focus. And skill which will be developed over time. Yes, and it's absolutely something we can all learn. I mean, that's without a doubt, that's a given. And there's simple ways that you can help people do that in the flow of their work by giving them some questions to ask initially. They can be written down on little cards to prompt them. Eventually that will be something that they'll remember and they'll start to do more as a habit and more of that automatic as part of what they're doing, but not to the point where you want it to be so automatic that they actually don't remember doing the check. Taking the time for purposeful checking. Intentionally checking in. You've got to have the capacity for that. this is something. yeah. Yeah, and leaders and organisations need to recognise that this is a skill and a habit that you want people to develop. So we all know that that's...takes time to rewire or to wire those parts of our brain and to think in that way. There is a need for balance. Yeah. Though there is a need for balance because often in organizations we see things taken too far. If critical thinking is taken too far and is not in balance, then you will end up with people constantly challenging everything. Whereas sometimes you just need to get the work done So there is a balance, there's a space for critical thinking in relation to AI, intelligent technologies, optimization. You actually need to understand where there is AI in your organization and what those points are to be able to know where you need space for that critical thinking. And often you don't know all the AI that's in your organization because it's embedded in your software. So as a leader, what do you do to generate critical thinking in your team. It starts with the questions that you ask and how you demonstrate a more holistic approach to thinking about something and the depth in analysis of how you're thinking about something. So if you're really good at asking questions, you're most likely to have your people good at doing that thinking before they get to give you something because they know the questions that you're going to ask from a critical thinking perspective. So form in that that habit around questions. And I would also add to that in as a leader, knowing where there is AI in your processes so that your team know where they need to create space for critical thinking at a minimum. And where that fits into their skill set of the future and how that's invested in by the business to create that space and that capacity to build those habits. And the last thing I'd say from my perspective is just make a part of that process of helping people learn how to think critically, make part of it tapping into the diversity of other people's critical thinking, because that is something that they will learn from as well and that they will benefit from if they can go into it with a learning mindset and an optimization mindset of actually, know Deb's going to ask me some great questions about this that I wouldn't have even thought of. She'll bring something to it. So if you can get them thinking about the goal that will be embedded in other people's questions as they critically think about something, that's a really good place to start and not seeing it as a criticism or a threat to where you've got to, but something that's going to add to and build on your ability to critically think and analyse something. I was just about to say it's a level of openness, whether it's the leader role modelling openness for when their work is being the subject of critical thinking and those questions or whether you do it on your own work and having that openness for how does this work and if somebody else has some perspectives they can add, it's being open to receiving that So you don't just go into a space of shut down protection, defensiveness of somebody else is asking me, how can we change this metric? Where did this data come from? What are those inputs that are creating those outputs? Like it's being able to be open to those types of questions. Cause you're already asking them yourself. could have a lunch in line where you put something up and then you get everyone to have, a playful session around how you could think critically around something. So if it's a report or if it's something that's come out of a large language model and you your team to be thinking about what those super skills are like, have some fun around it. can have like a deconstructed report or where everybody pulls it apart and then puts it back together. Yeah, there are ways that you can definitely play with that. And the more that you add social learning into that, the more beneficial it is for everybody in the room.
The more you add a little bit of lightness to it, again, the novelty factor will get people's brains switched on and curious and they'll pay attention. So definitely think about ways that you can demonstrate through an example of something real, what you're wanting people to start to think and do more about in their day to day and have different thoughts and demonstrate the power of different people's questions and perspectives in that conversation.
That's just one example of a way to bring that to a team. So we know that critical thinking is a really important topic and there's a number of different ways that you can think about the different components of that. We would advocate for you to think about how you create the space for people to build that skill and give them opportunities to practice and start to think about the questions you're asking as a leader of your people. But it is one of the master skills that we will need as humans moving forward because we have to be able to check what's real and what's not with the rise of intelligent technologies both inside our workplaces and outside our workplaces. Going to be a fundamental skill that we need to build on and help people develop in the flow of their everyday work because if you can't do that in a moment, if you're doing it a couple of days later or you're not doing it at all, it's too late. So you need to be able to have access to those skills. So we hope we've given you some insights today about what it is and how to bring it to life.
