Putting generative AI to the critical thinking test

- When it comes to GenAI, are you mostly a skeptic, a cynic, or neither? Ready to take the one question quiz and find out? Imagine you hear about a GenAI that offers to predict the next big stock market trend. How do you react? A, interesting. Show me the data. I'll cross-reference this with other financial advice. B, stock tips from a machine? No thanks. C, tell me more. Is this how I become wildly rich? If you said A, you're mostly a skeptic. You're open to what GenAI can offer, but with a grain of salt. You're going to keep probing, challenging, and asking questions. If you said B, you're mostly a cynic. You take everything about GenAI, not only with a grain of salt, but with the whole salt shaker. Your default setting is the eye rolling. Nope, I'm not buying it. If you said C you're neither. You're all in, excited about the possibilities and willing to take a leap of faith. So which are you? Because this is a course for amplifying critical thinking with GenAI, I'm here to make the case for skepticism. Skepticism doesn't assume the worst or the best. Instead, skepticism is probing and questioning to get to the best possible understanding. Skeptics keep an open mind so they can update their thinking based on good evidence. Skepticism is an active form of doubt. Critical thinking is biased towards skepticism because that inner skeptic is needed to find out whether that image you see, the article you read, or that video you watch is truly what it seems. This goes for all content, whether you are the one who creates it with your GenAI partner or not. And get this, you can turn that skepticism back on GenAI asking it to help you. And even second guess its own outputs. Cynicism. It's a passive withdrawal. It's a preemptive shrug that says, why bother? cynicism can be a conversation stopper. It's often an armor we put on to protect ourselves from being duped, but in the process, it sometimes keeps us from the good stuff too. Being neither might mean you're open to the new experiences that GenAI offers, but it could indicate a lack of critical thinking. If you just accept what GenAI offers without a dollop of doubt, you could be in for some nasty surprises. So as you stand on the brink of your next important decision or conclusion, channel your inner skeptic and avoid being a passive receptacle of information. Instead, be an active processor probing and dissecting what's served to you. Let's go do this with GenAI as your lab partner.