It’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to switch off your brain for simple tasks like launching a chatbot and replying to an email.
However, that convenience also has its drawbacks. When you stop engaging with a task, Jobs that require critical thinking, creativity, and judgment can weaken those mental muscles over time.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily work, some researchers have found that heavy reliance on AI is quietly de-skilling employees.
That’s a concern even for the average employee. Almost half of the 2,950 workers Workday surveyed last year were concerned that AI agents would lead to less critical thinking.
Anurag Dhingra, Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of enterprise connectivity and collaboration, told Business Insider in October that any big technology innovation comes with concerns.
This is an age-old question, Dhingra says. “Are we becoming too dependent? And does that mean we are becoming stupid as a result?”
Simply put? Not necessarily.
Dr. Majid FotuhiA Johns Hopkins University professor who studies neuroplasticity and Alzheimer’s disease prevention told Business Insider that passive reliance on technology can lead to a decreased ability to think critically. However, if used correctly, AI can allow our brains to process and analyze more information, which is a good thing.
We asked executives, professors, and neurologists how AI users can stay calm.
1. Dig deeper into the topic
Dhingra said having a deep understanding of a subject helps maintain critical thinking skills. Fresh. For example, he said he uses different models as tools to make sense of information and spends a lot of time understanding how AI models are built and work.
Gloria Mark, provost and professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, suggests developing daily habits that encourage deep thinking, such as reading long, difficult material or taking online courses that require sustained attention.
“It’s more about lifelong learning and going back to what you did as a student to improve your abilities,” she said.
She cautioned against the “trap of taking the path of least resistance and letting AI do all the work.”
“Stay informed by doing intellectual work.”
2. Write your own first draft
It’s worth writing down your own ideas first.
Geetha Rajan, a strategy leader and former head of AI implementation at PwC, told Business Insider that she always writes the first draft, even if she later uses AI to validate numbers, extract unstructured data, and challenge her work.
Joe Depa, global chief innovation officer at EY, told Business Insider that he similarly tells his team to write content the same way they would write emails before relying on LLMs.
”after that “Ask Copilot and the AI tools you are using to help you make changes,” Depa said, adding that sometimes they will find problems or ask you follow-up questions that challenge your thinking, and that using AI for enhancements is “much more productive.”
Vivienne Ming, principal scientist at the Possibility Institute and founder of Socos Labs, suggests using AI to challenge your thinking.
“Here’s my argument: What am I missing? What is the strongest argument for this?” she said, describing the approach as “productive friction.”
3. Find ways to challenge your brain
Michael Merzenich, a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco and a pioneer in brain plasticity research, told Business Insider that the brain “needs exercise” to stay sharp.
Merzenich, who is also the founder and chief scientific officer of Posite Science Corporation, said that when humans solve problems, they use their brains to reason, connect and recall important information. When people use AI to get answers instantly, they get them without effort and don’t come to their own conclusions.
Johns Hopkins University’s Fotuhi told Business Insider that finding a new hobby can become a daily brain routine. He also said he tries to test his memory and attention as much as possible, such as memorizing names and credit card numbers.
Aniket Kittur, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, said AI users should do things they find difficult.
“The harder you think about it, the more you get out of it,” he says, adding that if something feels easy, you’re probably not developing a real skill.
He recommends reading content that challenges your thinking, watching complex shows that require you to follow multiple threads, and taking a new route home without relying on GPS.
4. Think before you ask a question
Mike Wynn, Academy executive for AI capabilities and enterprise learning products at Bank of America, told Business Insider that AI can enhance strategic thinking. However, requesting LLM right away and relying on the output without validating it undermines its benefits.
He said people often use AI like a search engine and will find answers because that’s what AI is designed to do. However, Wynn said users need to think about why they need summaries and how they will be used.
Jacob Scherson, a professor at Denmark’s Aarhus University and founder of the Center for Hybrid Intelligence, similarly advised employees to stay in control of their thought processes.
His research outlines a framework called FERC (short for Frame, Explore, Refine, Commit) that is designed to ensure that humans remain creators rather than passive consumers of AI output. In practice, this means first slowing down before using AI to generate multiple alternatives, compare them, and actively critique them.
“If you only review one output, you’re not evaluating, you’re accepting,” Sherson said.
5. Don’t accept all output
Sol Rashidi, a former technology executive at IBM, AWS and Estée Lauder, previously told Business Insider that workers need to develop discernment. She said much of the content is generated by AI and used to retrain models.
With that in mind, Rashidi said that while they can ask the AI to respond, employees should not copy and paste its output as it may not be accurate.
Ming said many users fall into what she calls an “illusion of competence” and feel like the AI-generated work is their own, even if they couldn’t create it from scratch.
She recommends explaining the reasoning behind everything your AI generates out loud to your colleagues, yourself, and even your dog without looking at the screen.
“You’re not summarizing it, you’re teaching it,” she said. “If you can’t do that, you haven’t thought of anything. You’ve just done some very sophisticated copying.”
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