AI and Knowledge Work: Critical Thinking

Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, is fundamentally changing the way we work. Boston Consulting Group predicts that 10 to 15 percent of current jobs could be replaced with GenAI automation within five years, and 50 to 55 percent will be reshaped in some material way.

As of 2025, 21 percent of employees reportedly use AI in their work, and many employers ask for AI literacy in job descriptions. Data collection and processing, decision-making, and ideation in knowledge work all have the potential to be automated or semiautomated as large language models (LLMs) continue to develop.

Planners are knowledge workers engaged in critical thinking and intense problem-solving every day. Our work is multifaceted and interdisciplinary, and it requires a range of hard and soft skills that are now being affected by AI.

While AI in knowledge work presents opportunities for growth and upskilling, the use of AI may also lead to overreliance or other changes to the way we do our jobs and work with communities. Understanding both the pros and cons of using AI in planning work is essential for making informed decisions about integrating it into the workplace and job descriptions. This blog post discusses GenAI's impacts on critical thinking in knowledge work for planners.

The Importance of Critical Thinking in Planning

Critical thinking is an essential tool for planners. Bloom's Taxonomy separates cognitive abilities into six categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Critical thinking, among other skills, grows from a person's effectiveness in these categories. Planners use these skills every day as core components of the planning process.

The ability to make creative, rational, and informed decisions about an issue is a crucial part of solving problems on a community level. Communities require specific plans and solutions that foster identity and trust. We learn from and are inspired by plans made by other communities. Developing the skills needed to tailor those inspirations to our own contexts is what sets the greatest planners apart. Without the ability to think critically, our capacity to serve our communities is diminished.

Effects of AI Use on Critical Thinking

Recent studies suggest two clear correlations between GenAI use and critical thinking ability:

1. Higher confidence in GenAI tools is related to a lower ability to correctly assess task performance.
2. Higher GenAI usage is associated with less critical attention to tasks.

These findings have significant implications for the future knowledge workforce and planning. Cognitive offloading describes how a person shifts the responsibility of completing a cognitive task to an external source.

Offloading is not limited to AI use. For example, letting Microsoft Word check writing for grammar and spelling is a basic form of this phenomenon. However, because GenAI can complete much more complex tasks, the level of offloading becomes greater.

Furthermore, when using GenAI to complete a task, one is less likely to accurately assess self-performance. Most people are likely to overestimate their performance of tasks while using AI assistance, and those with greater AI literacy were even less accurate in their self-assessment. Additionally, in a survey, younger survey respondents were more willing to offload to AI than older respondents, raising implications for the future workforce.

Interestingly, in another research article, the authors found that those with higher confidence in their abilities exhibit more critical thinking when using AI tools at work, as they are more skeptical of the validity of an LLM's output. They also identify AI hallucinations as a critical problem in using generative tools in daily work, because users are not willing to check AI outputs as closely as they should in these early years of LLM technology. To combat these compounding issues, they propose a "shortlisting" AI program that provides provocations to spark a worker's own critical thinking skills, rather than correcting mistakes or streamlining workflows. Using AI to strengthen knowledge workers' cognitive abilities, rather than stymying them, could be a productive way forward.

Takeaways for Planners

The study authors posit "GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship." While these are important factors of critical thinking, they do not encompass the entire cognition process needed for effective planning and problem solving. This and other studies point to a potential future in which knowledge workers rely on GenAI so much that they are no longer willing or able to correctly assess the quality of their work or work independently of such tools.

But there is another future in which AI can be harnessed to strengthen critical thinking capabilities, but only if we choose to use it in this way. AI is still new and volatile, and the U.S. currently lacks robust legislation to properly govern its use. Furthermore, planning work is so community-oriented and context-specific that overreliance on using AI to think critically about problems may remove much-needed nuance from solutions.

As we continue to navigate this unprecedented landscape, we should consider how these tools align with our personal and professional ethics. Planning leaders in particular have a responsibility to fully understand the downsides of AI so that they can make informed decisions about its use in the workplace. Planners who use GenAI in their work should continue to use it carefully and thoughtfully as guardrails are put into place.

Top image: DigitalVision Vectors - Moor Studio