Will Critical Thinking Still Be Necessary With AGI ?

I had an interesting question from a tech friend over the weekend which was basically, “As AI gets smarter, as we get closer to AGI, are we still really going to need to apply critical thinking when using AI”.

My answer was that, yes, in my opinion, critical thinking will remain necessary, and actually become even more important as AI gets smarter.

The smarter these #AI systems appear, the more people tend to assume they’re always right, which actually increases the need for:

➡️ Checking assumptions,

➡️ Noticing edge cases,

➡️ Challenging outputs

Even smarter AI will still make errors, they may just be more subtle ones than what we are used to today i.e. today we get facts that are wrong, and hallucinated output. In the future I can imagine that we will get answers that are even more plausible but have flawed reasoning, biased framing, or answers that are technically correct but contextually harmful.

As AI errors get more sophisticated, then so must the thinking of the person using it i.e.

➡️ Checking consistency across sources.

➡️ Asking the AI what assumptions are in the framed answer

➡️ Thinking about the consequences of the answer being accepted

I think AI will become increasingly more sophisticated at:

➡️ Summarizing information

➡️ Drafting arguments

➡️ Exploring options.

In the enterprise, if companies don’t deliberately cultivate Critical Thinking then AI will end up masking weaknesses, particularly in younger employees who have not developed critical thinking skills. A junior employee plus AI may look very capable very quickly, but without the necessary critical thinking skills they can end up copying and pasting AI answers without checking, therefore missing bias or incorrect recommendations, and perhaps even failing to see that their initial question itself was wrong.

Many people my assume that the use of AI will actually be better in the younger generation coming through now but I think employees who developed critical thinking pre‑AI will be better positioned to interact with AI safely and effectively, especially in roles that involve oversight, decision‑making, and governance.

If you are reading this wondering what exactly is critical thinking in the context of AI read the primer post that I wrote on this subject.