Indications You are Outsourcing Thinking to AI

AI provides tremendous opportunities to expand capabilities and gain efficiency. But there’s a significant downside. We risk outsourcing thinking to AI, creating sub-optimal solutions, and hurting our reputations. Here are indicators that you are outsourcing thinking to AI:

What you produce using AI doesn’t contain an original idea. When tackling a problem or coming up with a new concept, think on your own, rather than first turning to an AI tool. AI can then be used to refine your idea, summarize experiences captured by others, or efficiently perform research to help determine the viability of your idea.

You have no story or experience that validates a premise presented by AI. To effectively promote a new idea or solution to a problem, personal experience is essential. Otherwise, you can’t sufficiently defend your thinking. For example, when I write articles such as this one, I derive the central premise myself, then prompt AI for additional ideas or perspectives. The only points from AI that I include in my articles (always written by my hand, not copied from an LLM response) are ones I could defend by sharing a personal experience that validates the point.

A point in an AI response doesn’t trigger any other new thoughts or ideas. AI is great for reminding you of past experiences or other concepts you can explore and expand upon. When no additional ideas are triggered, it’s also unlikely that the positive and negative ramifications of adopting a point from AI will be evident. Promoting an idea without being able to predict positive and negative ramifications is a high-risk approach that should be avoided. It is clear evidence that thinking has been outsourced to AI.

You can’t answer follow-up questions. Promoting an idea put forth by AI, and being unable to answer questions that peers, stakeholders, or senior leaders may pose, not only puts the business at risk, but also puts your reputation at risk.

People recognize it isn’t your language/style. Most people can recognize your writing style, typical vocabulary, and the type of ideas you share. When presenting a thought that is incongruent with what others know about you, scepticism will follow. Ensure that you can absorb, convey, and share ideas gleaned from AI in your own terms and the context of your experiences.

Failing to scrutinize AI responses or check references for context. Just don’t. Enough said!

AI responses shared lack the particulars of your situation and can’t be easily adopted. AI derives its responses from a broad array of content. Failing to customize the AI response to your particular project and business environment, or being unable to do so, is a sure sign you have outsourced your thinking to an AI tool.