Question-01¶

Critical Thinking and Creativity¶

As the AI Era unfolds (is it, actually?), in June 2026, on the Internet, we can meet a specific type of publication expressing concerns about whether the usage of AI will damage or even kill critical thinking and creativity.

However, before going into the subject of the interaction between humans and this new tool (AI), it seems to be necessary to take a wider look at the problem: what was the situation with critical thinking and creativity before AI? Before smartphones? Before the Internet? Before computers? While it is extremely difficult to generalize data for any conclusions on that, we can still have this feeling that the situation does not change dramatically with the arrival of any new tools: critical thinking and creativity strangely remain the feature presented in a very low percentage of the population. So, the question of how AI will affect critical thinking and creativity dissolves, as there is simply nothing to be affected in the first place.

Instead, we obtain the question "how can AI affect those adults who have the trait of critical thinking or some degree of creativity, and children who have potential for that?"

The answer to that: AI will not do anything in that regard. The only question is what those people will do to themselves with these tools in their hands. We already discussed the nuanced usage of this tool in the "Testing" section of this project, and based on technology features, have concluded:

"That is not AI "who" "creates" the "answer" - that is fully Human, AI only populates it with details and wording. Initial and general answers are always generalization of other Human consensus in the simplest possible form."

It absolutely depends on the intent of the person using AI (LLM) if it is used for research (where you ask extra difficult questions, doubt the output, check the cited sources, combine AI output with different types of information you can access and explore) or for thinking outsourcing (where you ask to provide you the answer without bare understanding of this answer an no clue of it's meaning and bias). In that sense, AI remains an amplifier tool in terms of information access (when you ask the right questions) and creativity (where you just stop using AI completely every time you feel its output does not reflect your vision and inner world).

While AI's owners put at the bottom of their UI the note "... is AI and can make mistakes, including about people" to protect themselves legally, to protect critical thinking, we could replace this with "This is just an opinion. There are others. There are missing details."

About children: we (adults) do not usually leave our children alone; thus, those parents and teachers who have the traits of critical thinking and creativity will share them with their children, and for those of them open to that knowledge, that will work perfectly as it always did. This includes, nowadays, an explanation of what AI actually provides ("answer" not "Truth") and how to use it.