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Long Reads: Is AI the End of Critical Thinking?

Daniel Ershov. 2025. UCL School of Management Long Reads.

Abstract

This UCL School of Management long read argues that the adoption of AI platforms such as ChatGPT does not signal the death of critical thinking. It places concerns about LLMs and cognitive offloading in historical context, comparing them to earlier concerns about writing, calculators, and Wikipedia, and argues that effective use of LLMs still requires prompting, interpretation, diagnosis of model failures, and human judgment.

Main Finding

LLMs can automate some tasks, but complex decisions still require users to understand the model's failures, interpret outputs, and apply context-specific human judgment.

Policy Relevance

Education and workplace AI policy should focus on how users develop prompting, evaluation, and problem-solving skills rather than treating AI use as a simple substitute for thinking.