Is AI eroding our critical thinking?

As AI has grown more commonplace in everyday life, psychologists theorize that it reduces users’ engagement in deep, reflective thinking, causing their critical thinking skills to atrophy over time. If individuals use the cognitive resources freed up by AI for innovative tasks, the promise holds. However, studies suggest that many users channel these resources into passive consumption, driven by AI-enhanced content curation. This trend aligns with findings on digital dependence, where the convenience of AI fosters a feedback loop that prioritizes entertainment over critical engagement. While it enhances efficiency and convenience, it inadvertently fosters dependence, which can compromise critical thinking skills over time. -Ross Pomeroy writing in BigThink

Going in Circles

When people get lost, they really do tend to walk in circles. German researchers discovered that volunteers who could not see the sun or moon often walked for hours in circles, sometimes in circles as small as 20 yards across. Some participants didn’t believe the researchers until they were shown proof.

What makes the difference are external signposts. Landmarks like the sun or moon completely changed the result.

One of the researchers offers this advice: “Don’t trust your senses. You might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.”

Isn’t that how life is? We know people who trust their senses and have no external guideposts to keep their lives on track. They believe they are marching forward, but all the while, they are going nowhere. They repeat the same mistakes. The people who get somewhere in life carefully choose their landmarks and trust these life-anchors.

Stephen Goforth

15 Articles about AI’s impact on College Faculty & Administrators

Introducing Claude for Education - Anthropic

Netflix Co-Founder Donates $50M to Launch AI and Humany Initiative at Bowdoin College – Hollywood Reporter

Business schools ease their resistance to AI – Financial Times

Schools use AI to monitor kids, hoping to prevent violence. Our investigation found security risks – Orange County Register

AI Surveillance Is Being Installed In Schools To Keep Kids Safe. But That’s Not All It’s Doing - MIC

Yale Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her of Terrorist Link – New York Times

OpenAI Announces 'NextGenAI' Higher-Ed Consortium - GovTech

AI is changing college for good. Higher ed leaders have these concerns, NC survey says – Charlotte Observer

Community Colleges Join Forces to Expand Access to AI Training – Inside Higher Ed

College Leaders Are Divided on the Risks and Benefits of Generative AI – Chronicle of Higher Ed

UNC uses AI in admissions review process, documents show how – Daily Tar Heel

6 Policy Recommendations for School Administrators – Campus Technology 

Unpacking the Role of AI in Physical Security – EdTech Magazine

Trump Administration Wants ‘AI Dominance’ But Lays Siege to Key Grant Agency - Chronicle of Higher Ed

AI influence on higher ed is growing, new survey shows - EdScoop

AI & Academic Research

Although today’s AI products are cast in the role of assistants, AI might eventually come to dominate the peer-review process, with the human reviewer’s role reduced or cut out altogether. Some enthusiasts see the automation of peer review as an inevitability — but many researchers, as well as journal publishers, view it as a disaster. -Nature

Nothing great

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one is completely immune

Psychological research shows that misinformation is cleverly designed to bypass careful analytical reasoning, meaning that it can easily slip under the radar of even the most intelligent and educated people. No one is completely immune. Indeed, there is now evidence that smarter people may sometimes be even more vulnerable to certain ideas, since their greater brainpower simply allows them to rationalise their (incorrect) beliefs. 

David Robson writing in The Guardian 

13 Articles about AI & Data Science from March 2025

Using LLMs to write code is difficult and unintuitive – Simon Willison 

Tiny satellite sets new record for secure quantum communication – Nature

The Impact of GenAI and Its Implications for Data Scientists – Toward Data Science 

AI Definitions: AI Washing

This Space Spy Agency’s AI Shift May Hint at Your Company’s Future Facing  - INC 

The Geospatial Analytics Industry is expected to”grow significantly” - Global News Wire 

Advancements in remote sensing & data analysis using AI have transformed archaeology, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of excavations. – Jerusalem Post

Getting Started with Kaggle Kernels for Machine Learning – MarkTechPost

AI Definitions: Synthetic Data 

What Data Scientists Need to Know About AI Agents and Autonomous Systems – KD Nuggets

AI Definitions: Symbolic Artificial Intelligence 

Scientists claim a major advance in geospatial modelling, which they say significantly reduces power demand while retaining accuracy - University of Glasgow 

The next wave of geospatial innovation may not be about small, incremental changes, but about rethinking workflows entirely – GeoWeek News

6 Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism & Media

Tue, April 1 - Website & Email Marketing

What: We guide you through the essentials of website and email marketing – the most direct online sales tools. Learn how to build an effective website that converts visitors into customers and create compelling email campaigns that drive engagement. Whether you’re just starting or looking to enhance your strategy, take your online presence to the next level.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Small Business Development Center, Temple University

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Tue, April 1 - Introduction to solutions journalism

What: This webinar will explore the basic principles and pillars of solutions journalism, talk about why it’s important, explain key steps in reporting a solutions story, and share tips and resources for journalists interested in investigating how people are responding to social problems.  

Who: Michael Davis, SJN's training & curriculum manager.

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Solutions Journalism

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Wed, April 2 - Hitting the Mark

What: This webinar will help you target your message to distinct audiences, protect your brand’s reputation, maintain public trust and navigate challenges effectively.

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: C2 Strategic and Indiana GAL CASA

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Wed, April 2 - Beyond the Basics of Science Reporting

What: This webinar is designed for reporters covering science either occasionally or full-time. It teaches basic principles about recognizing science worth reporting on and doing it justice in your coverage.

Who: Freelance science reporter Elena Renken and Ph.D. neuroscientist Dr. Tori Espensen

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Environmental Journalists

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Wed, April 2 - The Future Press: Testing AI in Journalism

What: This webinar will feature a presentation about an innovative project funded by the Dallas Morning News Innovation Endowment in which journalism students test the boundaries of AI in media production by utilizing tools such as ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard to generate content for a publication. The team maintains transparency throughout the process, openly discussing the use of AI and the editing required to refine AI-generated content for publication.

Who: Gracie Warhurst, UT alum and journalist Ryan Serpico; Hearst DevHub Angelica Ruzanova; UT student Jonathan Hopper; UT student Ashlyn Poole, UT student.

When: 4 pm, Eastern  

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Wed, April 2 - “And Now, a Word From Our Sponsor”: The Early Days of TV Advertising

What: How advertising evolved during television’s first two decades and the important role it played in convincing viewers that the key to happiness was to buy their way into the American dream.

Who: Media historian Brian Rose

When: 6:30 pm

Where: Zoom

Cost: $25

Sponsor: The Smithsonian

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Thu, April 3 - The Ethics of Nonprofit News: What Board Members and Donors Need to Know

What: Issues will include conflicts of interest and understanding the boundaries between the news and fundraising sides of a community journalism organization.

Who: Josh Stearns, managing director of programs at the Democracy Fund; Kara Meyberg Guzman, CEO and co-founder of Santa Clara Local, a nonprofit startup; Joe Kriesberg, publisher of CommonWealth Beacon.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The What Works project on the future of local news, part of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism

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Why Humans are Better Storytellers Than AI

Literary agent Jamie Carr of the Book Group describes great storytelling as something that makes “connections between things and ideas that are totally nonsensical — which is something only humans can do.” Can ChatGPT bring together disparate parts of your life and use a summer job to illuminate a fraught friendship? Can it link a favorite song to an identity crisis? So far, nope. Crucially, ChatGPT can’t do one major thing that all my clients can: have a random thought. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this” is something I love to hear from students, because it means I’m about to go on a wild ride that only the teenage brain can offer. It’s frequently in these tangents about collecting cologne or not paying it forward at the Starbucks drive-thru that we discover the key to the essay. I often describe my main task as helping students turn over stones they didn’t know existed, or stones they assumed were off-limits. ChatGPT can’t tap into the unpredictable because it can only turn over the precise stones you tell it to — and if you’re issuing these orders, chances are you already know what’s under the stone. 

Sanibel Chai writing in New York Magazine

Do I have Value?

To say a person has worth or value formulates only half a sentence. It begs two questions and raises a third: Worth what? To whom? Who says? These questions reveal a search for a source, a valuer, an authority behind the action of attaching worth. This quest implies our awareness of a person larger than us, who initiates relationships with us. Our parents stood as the original superhumans in whose eyes we wanted much worth. Now as adults, when we feel worthless, we ache with the dangling half-question. Do I have any value?  We used to seek evidence from Mom and Dad of our importance to them. Though we no longer look to them as our source, we have not yet identified a new one. We spin our wheels with the unanswered questions of our half-sentences. We wistfully yearn for some authority to come along and fill those gaps that our parents left.

Dennis Gibson, The Strong-Willed Adult

20 Articles about the Limitations of AI

"Humans in the loop" make AI work, for now - Axios

We were promised “Star Trek,” so why did we settle for these lousy chatbots? – Big Think

Having AI Mock Up An Old Game Is Not The Same As Preserving It – Tech Dirt  

"Humans in the loop" make AI work, for now - Axios 

AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged – The Guardian 

The truth about DOGE’s AI plans: The tech can’t do that – Washington Post   

The Cultural Backlash Against Generative AI – Toward Data Science  

Why Do AI Chatbots Have Such a Hard Time Admitting ‘I Don’t Know’? – Wall Street Journal  

China has more trust in AI than the United States – Axios

AI can solve math olympiad problems but flunks tic-tac-toe – Stat Modeling

The Words That Stop ChatGPT in Its Tracks Why won’t the bot say my name? – The Atlantic 

7 ways gen AI can create more work than it saves – CIO

AI’s Trust Problem – MIT Tech Review

I'm the CEO of an AI company, and this is the BS behind AI – Fast Company 

Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world – MIT    

The Death of Search AI is transforming how billions navigate the web. A lot will be lost in the process.  – The Atlantic

ChatGPT outperforms undergrads in intro-level courses, falls short later – ArsTechnica  

AI polling company defends wrong predictions on the US election – Semafor

Detroit police falsely arrested woman after faulty facial recognition hit: lawsuit  - Detroit News

DOGE's "AI-first" strategy courts disaster - Axios

AI Definitions: The Turing test

The Turing test - Proposed by computing pioneer Alan Turing in 1950, the Turing test measures whether a computer program could fool a human into believing it was human too.  

More AI definitions here.

Doing Nothing

I strongly suspect that doing nothing, if we can do it well, makes us happier too. -Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

15 Articles about AI & the Bigger Questions

Is AI eroding our critical thinking? – Big Think

A neuroscientist makes the case that AI can think – Washington Post

AI Military AI is here. Some experts are worried – Fast Company

Your A.I. Lover Will Change You - The New Yorker

We’re Already at Risk of Ceding Our Humanity to AI - LitHub

The Cultural Backlash Against Generative AI – Toward Data Science

When A.I. Passes This Test, Look Out – New York Times

What Would a Stoic Do? An AI-Based Decision-Making Model - Toward Data Science

Logging off life but living on: How AI is redefining death, memory and immortality – The Conversation 

Nvidia unveils $3,000 desktop AI computer for home researchers – Arstechnica

Rage against the machine: For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does – Aeon  

This AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat – Wall Street Journal

The AI Boom Has an Expiration Date – The Atlantic

Does Your Teen Recognize A.I.? Do You? -  New York Times

Will ChatGPT Get Tenure?  - Leiden Madtrics

The AI Stigma

“Some researchers have performed deception studies where the participants were falsely informed that something came from AI (when it was in fact human-made) or that something came from a human (when it was in fact AI-made). Flipping the claimed source from human to AI often caused study participants to give worse ratings to the deliverable.” -Jakob Nielsen

Conserve Your Willpower: It Runs Out

Ever wonder why your resolve to hit the gym weakens after you’ve slogged through a soul-sapping day at work? It’s because willpower isn’t just some storybook concept; it’s a measurable form of mental energy that runs out as you use it, much like the gas in your car.

Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, calls this “ego depletion,” and he proved its existence by sitting students next to a plate of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. Some were allowed to snack away, others ordered to abstain. Afterward, both groups were asked to complete difficult puzzles. The students who’d been forced to resist the cookies had so depleted their reserves of self-control that when faced with this new task, they quickly threw in the towel. The cookie eaters, on the other hand, had conserved their willpower and worked on the puzzles longer.

But there are ways to wield what scientists know about willpower to our advantage. Since it’s a finite resource, don’t spread yourself thin: Make one resolution rather than many. And if you manage to stick with it by, say, not smoking for a week, give your willpower a rest by indulging in a nice dinner. Another tactic is to outsource self-control. Get a gym buddy. Use Mint.com to regulate your spending or RescueTime.com to avoid distracting websites.

As John Tierney, coauthor with Baumeister of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength explains, “People with the best self-control aren’t the ones who use it all day long. They’re people who structure their lives so they conserve it.” That way, you’ll be able to stockpile vast reserves for when you really need it.

Judy Dunn, Wired Magazine

AI Definitions: Temperature

Temperature - A setting within some generative AI models that determines the randomness of the output. The higher the temperature set by the user the more variability there is in the result.

More AI definitions here

The AI Lens

Striving to create an AI strategy will likely force employees to look at everything through an AI lens. Right now, it seems like AI is seen as the solution, whatever the problem is.  But just because it’s getting all the attention today doesn’t mean that will continue. There will be other technologies that are coming downstream, and focusing too much on AI will crowd out other solutions to other problems a company might have. -Wall Street Journal

12 Articles about AI & Audio

AI at the microphone: The voice of the future? - The Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Audio Tech Focus: AI Has Plenty of Potential — and Potential Pitfalls — for Broadcast Sports – Sports Video  

These AI powered earbuds pack a secret — you can record and translate speech – Tom’s Guide

What audio artists working in games think of AI – The Conversation

Eerily realistic AI voice demo sparks amazement and discomfort online – ArsTechnica

AI can steal your voice, and there's not much you can do about it – NBC News 

Amazon says it's testing an AI voice dubbing system that will translate select content on the company's streaming service into other languages – Engadget  

How AI can turn audio recordings into accurate images – Data Science Central 

Holiday Terms & Conditions — A Christmas Album (created by AI) - Grex  

Illuminate is a new AI podcasting tool from Google - The Conversation 

All Madeline wanted was to talk to her deceased husband, Eli, again. She recreated his voice with A.I. – New York Times 

Celine Dion warns fans to beware of fake, AI-generated songs appearing online – CNN

Memories are Overrated

A comment I heard from a member of the audience after a lecture illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing memories from experiences. He told of listening raptly to a long symphony on a disc that was scratched near the end, producing a shocking sound, and he reported that the bad ending “ruined the whole experience.” But the experience was not actually ruined, only the memory of it. The experience itself was almost entirely good, and the bad end could not undo it, because it had already happened. My questioner had assigned the entire episode a failing grade because it had ended very badly, but that grade effectively ignored 40 minutes of musical bliss. Does the actual experience count for nothing?

Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion – and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keep score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.

We have strong preferences about the duration of our experiences of pain and pleasure. We want pain to be brief and pleasure to last. But our memory (represents) the most intense moments of an episode of pain or pleasure and the feelings when the episode was at its end. A memory that neglects duration will not serve our preferences for long pleasure and short pains.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow