AI in the Workplace May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, Experts Warn Workers

AI may make you 'boring' at work, Columbia Business School professor says: How it can hurt your career

Meanwhile, Eva Selenko, a work psychology professor at Loughborough University in England, is most worried about people using AI for tasks that are "core to one's self-understanding." Using artificial intelligence can make people "boring," according to Sandra Matz, a professor at Columbia Business School. Her research on the topic indicates two direct consequences for workers: stagnation and mediocrity. "When employees use it to outsource critical thinking or creative reasoning, there's a real risk of gradually falling behind and becoming complacent," said Matz. One reason for that is many AI tools generate the most obvious and safe responses, she said: "In short, we become just like everyone else." Already 43% of workers in the U.S. report using AI for their job, according to a study published in March by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. But many professionals may struggle to distinguish between helpful and harmful ways of using the technology, said Fred Oswald, an industrial-organizational psychologist and a former member of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. "There is a Wild West of AI use that's worth understanding and exploring, so that employees and organizations can manage risks and further benefit," Oswald said. Using AI can be "fantastic" for upping your productivity by automating and accelerating mundane work tasks, Matz said. You can also use the technology as "a sparring partner for brainstorming," she said. But you don't want AI to replace your own thinking, problem-solving and creativity, she added. "The moment all employees start consulting AI when developing their ideas, independent thinking begins to give way to algorithmic consensus," Matz said. Americus Reed II, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, said his colleagues describe outsourcing your critical thinking to AI as "cognitive surrender." Instead, AI is best used for summarizing information, analyzing data and organizing ideas, Reed said. "It should remove friction, not replace judgment," he said. "The goal is to spend less time processing information and more time creating meaning." Those early in their career should be especially mindful that AI isn't getting in the way of their learning, said Dorothy Leidner, a business and ethics professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. "The risk is higher for younger workers who do not have a deep expertise to help them use AI as a thought enhancer rather than a thought generator," Leidner said. Using AI to draft emails or Slack messages to colleagues, employees or managers "will gradually erode trust," Matz said. While AI can summarize a meeting or compile a progress report, informal workplace interactions should be organic and spontaneous, she said. "The moment we suspect that a message has been outsourced to AI, we might start to question whether our colleagues care enough to write to us themselves," she said. It's the imperfections, lack of polish and even tension in communication that lead to the strongest connections, she said. "Preserving those human signals in our interactions is going to be a major challenge for organizations adopting AI," Matz said. Leidner said she also recommends against relying too much on "digital twins," or your virtual clone, when talking to people you know. "If we get to the point where AI is generating the emails and AI is responding to the emails, then there is no actual communication taking place," Leidner said. Eva Selenko, a work psychology professor at Loughborough University in England, said she is most worried about people using AI for tasks that are "core to one's self-understanding as a professional." "Witnessing a tool outperforming you on a central task of your expertise can be a status threat," Selenko said. "If these opportunities are taken away, your self-concept gets a bit more shaky." However, experiences like this one may be inevitable as the technology improves, Reed said. "When AI performs tasks you've long considered 'your thing,' it's natural to ask, 'What value do I still bring?'" Reed said. The answer isn't to stop using the tools, but to find your meaning "around qualities AI can't replicate," Reed said. "Workers must remember that adopting AI is not the same as outsourcing your identity," he said. "Technology changes quickly, but the uniquely human skills -- judgment, creativity, curiosity and relationships -- become even more valuable." Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

The Hidden Cost of Using AI at Work: You May Be Training Yourself to Be Average

The research comes from Sandra Matz, a professor at Columbia Business School who spoke to CNBC about her studies. The threat from AI toward people's jobs may be much more immediate than some speculative near future date when the AI is smart enough to replace you, Matz thinks. Instead, the concern is about stagnating in your duties and falling into mediocrity. Matz thinks it's simple: workers outsourcing their critical thinking tasks or creative duties create a "real risk of gradually falling behind and becoming complacent," she told CNBC. AI is a crutch in this scenario: turn to it too often, and you risk your own skills withering. The concerns about AI and mediocrity, or becoming boring, are subtle. AI tools tend toward obvious or safe responses to queries, Matz noted, meaning that if you're relying on it to solve a problem in the same way someone in a rival company halfway round the world is using it, you risk becoming "just like everyone else," Matz said. The more employees start consulting AI when developing ideas, the bigger the risk that independent thinking gives way to "algorithmic consensus," Matz says. To complement Matz' theories, Americus Reed II, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, also explained his work on the topic. He described the risk of over-relying on AI as "cognitive surrender." The risk is that your own skills fade as you use AI more and more, with particular harm to someone early in their career when they'd traditionally be learning fast, and honing their skills through trial and error.

Experts Warn AI Could Hurt Critical Thinking as Workplace Adoption Surges - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

More than 40% of U.S. workers now use artificial intelligence (AI) on the job, but relying on the technology to replace critical thinking and creativity could hurt long-term career growth, according to a report published Sunday. AI As A Productivity Tool Matz said AI works best as a productivity tool that removes repetitive work or serves as a brainstorming partner, rather than replacing human judgment. Americus Reed II, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, described excessive dependence on AI as "cognitive surrender," saying workers should spend less time processing information and more time creating meaning. Experts also cautioned against relying on AI for workplace communication. Matz said using AI to draft emails or messages could gradually erode trust among colleagues because authentic interactions often depend on imperfect, human communication. Dorothy Leidner, a business and ethics professor at the University of Virginia, added that younger professionals may face greater risks because they have not yet developed the expertise needed to use AI as a thinking aid rather than a thinking replacement. Beyond The Workplace Former White House communications director and SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci has also said AI could increase demand for jobs requiring human interaction, empathy and personal presence as routine tasks become increasingly automated. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

AI is eroding the worker judgment their paycheck depends on

AI chatbots can generate polished responses within seconds, allowing users to refine rough prompts with minimal time and effort. That speed has made AI tools a daily habit for a growing share of American workers, many of whom treat the trade-off as obviously worth it. For summarizing meeting notes, automating data entry, and drafting routine documents, AI tools offer a genuine competitive advantage in the workplace. A growing body of research, however, warns that the advantage carries a hidden cost that compounds over time without obvious warning. The cost does not appear in the tasks AI handles well, but rather in the judgment, original reasoning, and problem-solving skills it gradually displaces. Wharton's cognitive surrender study reveals how AI overrides worker judgment In a working paper posted in January, Wharton marketing professor Gideon Nave and postdoctoral researcher Steven D. Shaw introduced the concept of "cognitive surrender." They describe it as the habit of accepting AI-generated answers with little scrutiny, bypassing both intuition and deliberate reasoning. The study used nearly 10,000 individual reasoning trials in which some participants could consult a chatbot secretly programmed to deliver either correct or confidently wrong answers. When the chatbot was right, participants' accuracy jumped 25 percentage points above the baseline set by people who worked alone. When it was wrong, accuracy fell 15 points below that same baseline, meaning AI access made them worse off than having no help at all. Participants accepted the chatbot's incorrect answers 80% of the time, and their confidence rose 11.7% regardless of accuracy. "My biggest takeaway is that when AI is wrong, we see that people end up performing worse than if they had no AI at all and become more confident in their wrong answers," Nave told Forbes. Early-career workers face the steepest risk from AI-driven skill erosion The Wharton data raises a pointed concern for workers in the early stages of their careers, when judgment and expertise are still developing. Dorothy Leidner, a business and ethics professor at the University of Virginia, has warned that the risk hits hardest for those who lack foundational experience. "The risk is higher for younger workers who do not have a deep expertise to help them use AI as a thought enhancer rather than a thought generator," Leidner told CNBC. Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, an information science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, uses a related concept he calls "cognitive debt." The term describes the capability that erodes each time an employee lets AI make a decision that requires independent judgment, Jarrahi explained to Human Resources Director (HRD). He warns that the most dangerous category of AI delegation involves the hard judgment calls where independent thinking develops through repetition and experience. Morsa Images/Getty Images Researchers warn that AI overuse erodes both originality and brain function The concern extends beyond individual skill loss into the quality and originality of the ideas employees produce for their organizations. Sandra Matz, a professor of business at Columbia Business School, has published research showing that AI-assisted choices become increasingly predictable and less varied over time. The underlying ideas converge toward the same outputs, even when the surface-level language still appears diverse, the study found. "When employees use it to outsource critical thinking or creative reasoning, there's a real risk of gradually falling behind and becoming complacent," Matz told CNBC. Adam Green, a neuroscience professor at Georgetown University, reinforces the concern from a biological perspective through his laboratory research. Unpracticed cognitive skills undergo measurable physical deterioration in the brain through the same neuroplasticity that builds them, Green explained to HRD. Where the line falls between helpful AI and a career liability The key takeaway is not to stop using artificial intelligence but to use it more thoughtfully and carefully. Americus Reed II, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, draws a clear boundary between productive and destructive uses of AI in comments shared with CNBC. It should remove friction, not replace judgment. The goal is to spend less time processing information and more time creating meaning. Reed points to summarizing information, analyzing data, and organizing ideas as areas where AI adds clear value, while flagging judgment-intensive work as the terrain where users need to keep their reasoning in the loop. The 2026 International AI Safety Report, backed by expert nominees from more than 30 countries and international organizations, found that reliance on AI tools can weaken critical thinking skills and encourage "automation bias." The pay premium on AI skills is rising, but AI fluency alone isn't the whole story For workers navigating a job market absorbing AI at an accelerating pace, the central takeaway from this body of research is direct. The researchers cited above converge on a shared warning: The tools themselves are not the threat, but uncritical dependence on them can quietly erode the judgment and reasoning skills that make workers hard to replace. Job postings that list AI-related skills already command salaries roughly 28% higher than those without them, research from labor analytics firm Lightcast has indicated. The workers who benefit most from AI in the long run will be those who combine AI skills with their own critical thinking and judgment. The Wharton study's closing recommendation is therefore blunt. AI systems need to prompt people to think, not to think for them, Shaw and Nave concluded. Until the tools are redesigned to do that, Shaw and Nave argue, the responsibility for maintaining independent judgment rests with the individual user. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 20, 2026 at 6:37 PM.