When you outsource your reasoning to artificial intelligence you reduce yourself to a middle manager of your own thoughts says AI and design researcher Advait Sarkar In his TED Talk he examines mental tradeoffs of using AI at work and introduces a different kind of tool that encourages critical thinking nudges reflection and might actually help you get smarter Visit the in our to learn more AI TEDTalk

We've solved the problem of having to think. Unfortunately, thinking wasn't actually a problem. What I'm about to show you is a prototype developed by my colleagues and me at the Tools for Thought team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. Clara's colleagues have asked her to write a proposal. She really needs to get to grips with this report, understand its findings and its data and how it fits into her business context. As she reads, she makes notes about her thoughts and highlights excerpts from the document. She also sees AI-generated commentary and critiques. We call these provocations. Here's a provocation that raises a potential opportunity which she highlights and annotates. Unlike typical AI suggestions, provocations are not meant to be applicable all the time. They're instead meant to stimulate your thinking about your work because if you understand your work well enough, deeply enough to make the confident decision not to accept a piece of feedback, then the feedback process is still working as intended. And Clara can do things here like add a heading to the outline. While this text is AI-generated, Clara has a completely different relationship to this text than if she just dropped in some documents and said, write me a report. It reflects Clara's decisions, Clara's judgments, Clara's unique personal professional expertise. To put it simply, we have gone from this to this. What would you rather have? A tool that thinks for you or a tool that makes you think?