Here is an AI summary in bullet point form: ^/s

• Title: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
• The study surveyed 319 knowledge workers to explore how Generative AI (GenAI) impacts their critical thinking practices and the perceived effort involved in these tasks.
• Knowledge workers primarily engage in critical thinking when using GenAI tools to enhance work quality, avoid negative outcomes, and develop skills.
• Key barriers to critical thinking include lack of awareness, time pressure, limited motivation, and challenges in improving AI responses in unfamiliar domains.
• Higher confidence in GenAI reduces the perceived effort required for critical thinking tasks, while confidence in their own skills tends to increase perceived effort, especially during evaluation and application of AI outputs.
• Participants reported enacting critical thinking in about 60% of the examples shared, often involving goal and query formation, response inspection, and integration of AI outputs.
• Trust in GenAI can lead to over-reliance, diminishing independent problem-solving and critical engagement, particularly in routine tasks.
• The study identified motivators for critical thinking, including the desire for quality work and skill improvement, alongside inhibitors like perceived task importance and job scope.
• Knowledge workers often conflated reduced effort with reduced critical thinking when satisfied with AI-generated responses, indicating a potential risk of complacency.
• The findings suggest that GenAI tools should be designed to support critical thinking by addressing awareness, motivation, and ability barriers among users.
• The implications highlight the need for feedback mechanisms in GenAI tools to help users calibrate their trust and confidence, ensuring a balanced relationship between AI assistance and independent critical thinking.

Edit: For anyone else finding their way here, the title of the linked article is (hence the joke):

“The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers”

Just send the bullet point

Why even have a human at that point? We shouldn’t even have conversations with each other anymore. Let’s just hold up our phones and let them do the talking.

I work in international freight and this is still a thing. Most customs brokers are email now, but some still require documents be faxed. So our system takes the PDF that it auto generates for every shipment and faxes it to the number on file. From time to time those same brokers will email us a copy of the PDF we faxed them to have something corrected. So they are getting the fax in their email rather than having us just email the thing directly. It makes zero sense, like I understand keeping the fax capability for legacy customers and as a backup, but your primary should be email if it’s all going there anyway.