AI Enabled Organizations With A Culture of Critical Thinking Will Fly Higher

AI is the next generation of automation and will help organizations become faster and potentially more efficient, but is it alone really going to be a competitive advantage? ?There will be early users that get some advantage from just having a tool to which others don’t have current access. However, in the end, like all tools, it’s the details of implementation and the environmentals of how the organization embraces the technology that will be the game changer. Having a critical thinking culture will be the difference between those that follow the pack and those that break away and soar high. Lack of critical thinking skills is not a new issue at the individual or organizational level. Not having this as part of your cultural DNA is already considered a competitive disadvantage and it’s only going to get worse with the incorporation of AI into business and engineering processes. As I was contemplating this reality, I came across this blog by Rick Lash that asks the question: “Does Your Organization Have a Critical Thinking Gap?”( https://www.verityintl.com/blog_post/does-your-organization-have-a-critical-thinking-gap/ ). He outlines some really good approaches for detecting and fixing critical thinking gaps as an organization. Not surprisingly it starts at the top. If you, as a leader, are never challenged or never wrong, you probably don’t have a critical thinking organization. If you don’t challenge your teams to seek and provide data to backup claims and proposed solutions, again, you probably don’t have a critical thinking organization. This isn’t going to change with AI. If your organization doesn’t question or test the information or proposed solutions that are generated by AI, then you are relying on the critical thinking of the AI engine. So I thought, why not ask one of the leading generative AI systems about its critical thinking to understand the risk. ?I asked the ChatGPT app: How do you incorporate critical thinking into your responses?” The answer was: “Critical thinking is an integral part of my responses, as it involves analyzing information, evaluating different perspectives, and providing reasoned and well-informed answers”. It went on to give me a list of its approaches and limitations. Including: "While I am a machine learning model and don't possess human-like consciousness, I am designed to generate responses that reflect a degree of critical thinking by drawing on patterns in the data I was trained on. However, it's important for users to critically evaluate the information I provide and consult multiple sources, especially for significant decisions or important matters". I then asked it: How do you weight various views when you build a response?” it responded with: “When I generate responses, I do not have preferences, opinions, or the ability to "weight" views in the way humans do. However, my responses are generated based on patterns in the data I was trained on”. It went on and again gave some approaches and limitations, along with this caution: “It's important for users to critically evaluate the information I provide, especially in complex or controversial topics. For important decisions or specialized topics, consulting multiple sources or subject-matter experts is advisable”. Even the AI app knows the importance of applying human critical thinking to its results or programmed to say so. AI will allow significant data to be generated that gives the perception of analysis, but will often be of unknown quality or biased based on user methodologies to gather that data or the data itself. If you ask generative AI systems one question in one way, you will get one outcome. If you reframe that question, you may get another answer. We need to be aware of AI pitfalls just as much as other historical human bias critical thinking pitfalls we fight on a daily basis. This article by ?Vinod Aithal and Jasmin Silver on demonstrating a methodology for how to use generative AI systems for “Enhancing learners’ critical thinking skills with AI-assisted technology” is interesting to me because it highlights how to apply critical thinking to AI outputs.(https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2023/03/30/enhancing-learners-critical-thinking-skills-with-ai-assisted-technology/) . ?The intent of the article is how to use AI to teach critical? thinking skills, ?but it is also a simplistic roadmap for how to use AI data in a critical thinking culture. The concept s to simply reframing multiple questions and/or intentionally get opposing viewpoints so the user can compare and contrast that information provided. This can be very powerful way to quickly get lots of data without trying to recreate what others have done before, but get a more complete picture of the options and potentially identify inherent biases in the data or training. This is not much different than working with people to fully understand their approaches and biases. Asking more questions and applying critical thinking to the answers provides a more complete understanding of the problem/solution space and faster understanding will allow better decision making. Why is this important for? an organization? it will shorten learning curves. It’s always a balance of speed vs perfection. Never fail, generally means always last. ?Some think asking too many questions slows the process down, but in most cases identifying these failure modes at the idea stage saves exponentially more time and money. Fail fast doesn't mean you have to be ignorant. This is really just another methodology for failing fast. Doing it before you bend metal or burn a chip. Using AI to supercharge critical thinking earlier in the process will enable organizations to fail faster , where it costs less and saves time. Combined with digital transformation tools, AI will be a game changer for critical thinking organizations to fail faster in the virtual world. Some would argue that this could squash innovation, but that has always been a challenge, determining what information do you need to make a bet on an emergent idea. So I will leave with this: Critical thinking and challenging ideas/solutions is not a culture no, it’s a culture of knowing. ??