One of the biggest risks with AI?
It’s not that it gets things wrong.
It’s that it sounds so damn confident when it does.
That’s why critical thinking has never been more important.
AI can give you speed.
But speed without judgment?
That’s a liability.
You Must Follow the 10-80-10
The first 10 is you framing the inquiry. The less you know about the subject the more suspicious you need to be of the answer.
The 80 – Let AI do the big lift. It is knowledge on tap. Or Unmetered Intelligence.
The Final 10 – Audit, Edit, Integrate.
When it comes to the Audit and Edit. Here’s the chain-of-thought framework I’ve been reinforcing with our team to use AI well—especially when we’re making decisions that matter:
1️⃣ Gather Evidence
Start by asking AI for the top 20 most-cited academic articles on the topic. And then ask it for the top 20 most cited in the last two years.
We want both legacy and leading-edge thinking.
2️⃣ Contextualize
Ask AI to take those sources and build an annotated bibliography: sample sizes, publication dates, citations.
I don’t want studies with a sample size of 2.
Strip out the fluff and get to what’s actually credible.
3️⃣ Synthesize
Have AI summarize areas of alignment and disagreement. Where do the experts converge? And where are the gaps?
4️⃣ Challenge
This is where it gets fun.
Open a new chat. And Ask AI to viciously critique the argument.
Push it to find weaknesses, blind spots, and counterpoints.
5️⃣ Conclude
Now you weigh the evidence and come to your own judgment.
Not because AI told you to—but because you structured the thinking.
We used this process to dig into research on gratitude in the workplace.
Headlines made it sound like a magic bullet.
But the deeper dive told a different story:
The immediate impact was minor—but compounded over time, consistency made it powerful. This was a nuance the headlines missed.
That insight changed how we designed feedback rhythm in our own organization.
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Here’s the takeaway:
AI can enrich your thinking.
If you train yourself and your team to use it that way.
The real edge with AI comes from knowing how to work with and question it.
Critical thinking + AI is one of the most important emerging skillsets in the workplace.
