Want to use AI to improve your work? Have it disagree with you
Knowledge workers such as scientists, teachers, lawyers and business leaders are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence applications for tasks that demand imagination, creativity and problem-solving. Ironically, perhaps, recent research shows that people who interact with generative AI for work tasks can end up not thinking critically. They can surrender to AI's quick and confident…
The research discussed in The Conversation highlights the importance of using AI to challenge one's own ideas in order to improve problem-solving and work quality. When knowledge workers intentionally use generative AI to generate friction by asking for information that contradicts their thinking, they can reveal unlikely perspectives and spark new insights.
For example, a marketing professional asked AI to create customer personas that would lead them to dislike a product under development, which revealed customer preferences the professional had not considered. Similarly, an attorney used AI to find obscure legal loopholes and consider how companies might exploit them. By leaning on their own expertise to question surprising information provided by AI, knowledge workers can avoid cognitive offloading and maintain critical thinking skills.
Additionally, organizations can encourage this behavior by using prompts that challenge rather than agree with a person's thinking and providing resources such as AI boot camps and sandboxes for workers to learn how to effectively use AI tools.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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- Want to use AI to improve your work? Have it disagree with you theconversation.com
