Artificial intelligence can be a handy tool, but too much heavy use risks weakening critical thinking skills, one expert says. Sinead Bovell, a tech entrepreneur, suggested using AI as a “sparring partner” in an interview with CTV Your Morning on Monday. She explained how AI can affect cognitive friction, how the mind reacts to and absorbs new ideas. Cognitive friction, “can be very useful because it forces us to more deeply engage with a task and draw on capacities that we still expect ourselves to have, like our reasoning capacity, problem solving, imagination” Bovell said. As AI use rapidly develops and enters work and life spaces, it can become an easy crutch, she said. Addiction, sycophantic behaviour, fake facts, and even psychosis are all risks when using AI. It’s not just AI that poses these risks, Bovell said. “For years, our technologies, especially the digital ones have been designed to reduce mental effort and perform (cognitive) tasks on our behalf,” she said. Other digital technologies, like smartphones and the internet have negatively affected cognitive capabilities, as has television. To counter the potential degradation of cognitive thinking, Bovell said she likes to read, and especially read aloud to keep her skills sharp. Reading and reading aloud stimulate important skills, like inferencing, critical thinking, and language she added. She added that Sudoku puzzles and mental math are other ways she keeps herself sharp. Crosswords and similar puzzles have been connected to healthier brains and helping to protect against cognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s. “I try to use (AI) much more as a sparring partner,” Bovell said. “It’s an input into my decision making, it isn’t the final verdict.” “I try to frame the problem, what do I want from AI and is the right tool to support me in this process, know what I’m really taking to it,” she added. AI’s role as a sparring partner is to highlight weaknesses in her thinking, Bovell said. “I don’t use it to make decisions on my behalf,” she added. “You never want to just take what AI has concluded and say that that is the final verdict and that is what you should be acting on.” Cognitive skills, like judgement and decision-making can weaken over time, Bovell explained. If AI makes all the calls, then the human brain will lose the skills it’s expected to have, she said. Instead, she suggests using AI as a complement to a workflow to keep those skills sharp.
