This is self-reported survey evidence, not a causal test of whether AI use reduces cognitive ability.
What the paper gives us.
- 01
The work of thinking moves
Participants described less effort in some traditional forms of critique and more work in verification, response integration, and deciding what the task requires.
- 02
Confidence changes scrutiny
When users were more confident in the AI, they reported doing less critical thinking. The useful design question is how to preserve appropriate skepticism without making tools unusable.
- 03
Do not claim brain decline
The study cannot show that AI causes a lasting decline in critical-thinking ability. It describes reported work practices and points to a design challenge worth monitoring.
What was actually studied.
- Design
- Peer-reviewed survey of knowledge workers
- Sample
- 319 knowledge workers · 936 work examples
- Population
- Knowledge workers who used generative AI at work at least weekly.
- Comparison
- Task- and user-level differences in confidence and critical-thinking effort.
- Outcomes
- Reported critical-thinking practices in AI-assisted work.
- Effect
- Higher confidence in AI was associated with less reported critical thinking; higher self-confidence with more.
What this may mean for work.
Use AI as a partner in a visible thinking loop: ask for options, verify important claims, state your own decision criteria, and retain responsibility for the final judgment. The goal is not to avoid offloading; it is to offload without becoming passive.
This is VSX's practical inference, not a claim directly established by the study.
Keep one human checkpoint
Before accepting an AI output, write one criterion it must satisfy and perform one independent check appropriate to the stakes. Save a one-sentence rationale for the final choice. Notice whether the checkpoint catches errors, clarifies the decision, or becomes needless ritual.
Where the claim stops.
- Participants self-reported effort and examples rather than completing controlled performance tasks.
- The design is observational and cannot establish causality.
- Findings may not transfer to people who rarely use AI or to every kind of knowledge work.
Read the original research.
Hao-Ping Lee, Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, and Nicholas Wilson. “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers.” Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025.
Open source paperReviewed by VSX on July 18, 2026.