Future Skills

Critical Thinking

The skill has not disappeared. It has moved. Training that ignores the move teaches people to do a job nobody has any more.

What changed

Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft Research surveyed 319 knowledge workers using generative AI weekly, across 936 real-world use instances. They describe critical thinking at work shifting from information gathering to information verification, from problem-solving to AI response integration, and from task execution to task stewardship.

The same study found that higher confidence in generative AI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher confidence in one's own judgment is associated with more. That is a correlation from self-reported data, not a demonstrated cause, and we describe it that way.

What the course works on

Verifying generated output in your own domain, where you can tell what is wrong, rather than in the abstract.
Recognizing the failure modes of the specific tools your organization uses.
Deciding what to check, how far, and when checking costs more than it returns.
Integrating machine output into work you remain accountable for.

An honest note on the evidence

A meta-analysis of 341 effect sizes found critical-thinking instruction produces an average effect of g = 0.30, and works best when it includes dialogue, authentic problems and mentoring (Abrami and colleagues, Review of Educational Research, 2015). That is educational research on student populations, and it is a small-to-moderate effect. We design to those three conditions because they are what the evidence supports, and we do not claim more than g = 0.30 buys.

How this is sold

Course details and pricing are by quotation. We deliver this course to teams, not as an individual enrollment. If you want to bring it to your team, register your interest below.

Sources

Lee and colleagues, CHI 2025Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University. A survey of 319 knowledge workers reporting 936 first-hand instances of generative AI use at work.
Abrami and colleagues, Review of Educational Research, 2015Strategies for Teaching Students to Think Critically: A Meta-Analysis. 341 effect sizes, weighted mean g+ = 0.30.