It is reassuring to see that when it comes to implementing AI most organisations are now recognising the importance of retaining strong human judgement within the final decision-making processes.
We are increasingly aware of the power of cultivating ‘collective intelligence’ – a genuinely symbiotic human-AI approach that enables us to get the very best from AI technologies.
The real challenge however emerges when time is short and the pressure to deliver is intense. If your AI companion has served you well in previous situations and its latest output appears professional, plausible, cogent and polished, it can be all too easy to abdicate that final human responsibility to double check and critically evaluate what it has produced.
This temptation towards intellectual complacency – or shallow thinking under organisational pressure – shines a spotlight on the growing importance of developing individuals’ ‘metacognitive skills.’
In essence, this is our capability to think about the quality of our own thinking. It requires us to pause and ask whether we have stayed with the AI’s output long enough, wrestled with its implications deeply enough, and applied sufficient human judgement and instinct before concluding, ‘Yes – this is good to go.’
In the AI era we must build the habit of protecting that vital space and time for reflective scrutiny – a deliberate internal conversation with ourselves about what is really going on beneath the surface.
It is this rigourous human sense making, judgement and thoughtful interrogation of AI’s internal outputs that we must continue to safeguard and value as we move forward. Read our Latest article.
