There’s this moment that still looms large in my memory and in my current thinking from back when I was a sophomore in high school (i.e., back in the dark ages). I had just switched to a different French class mid-semester and I really liked my new teacher. This was my least favorite subject in high school, and the one I struggled with most. Madam asked a question of a student and while he was formulating his answer, she turned to the rest of the class and said, “Maintenant, pensez!” Or maybe it was, “Maintenance pensez, tout le mond!” Now think, everyone. I THINK she went on to say, in French, that she might call on anyone next.
This moment has stuck with me because it had not previously occurred to me that people might not be trying to figure out the answer for themselves while our classmate struggled. Weren’t we all already thinking? I thought that her reminder was funny, for being so unnecessary.
Last week, I was listening to a Ezra Klein Show podcast with guest Ethan Mollick on how to use various AI and LLM tools, today. They were talking about merely wanting a correct or plausible answer, as compared to the hard work of thinking through a problem. Ezra keeps mentioning from episode to episode that generating an early draft is about thinking, and having an AI or intern do the work could give him a draft but it wouldn’t help him to figure out what he thinks or how he should think or whether he needs to rethink something. Ethan remarked, “People who like thinking like thinking.”
This is a challenge in my work, has always been a challenge in my work. This was true when I was teaching. This was true when I worked in IT. And it is true as a researcher and in my assessment development work. It most definitely is true as a coach. How do we get people who might not actually like to think to actually think?
What is our future, with expanded artificial intelligence tools? It would be great if they could take some of the drudgery from our plates, but it seems that many people hope that AI can do the thinking for them. It seems that many people think that others would rather not think either, and the best thing that AI can do for us is to take responsibility for thinking and then just give us answers, results and shortcuts. That is not what I mean by drudgery. Of course, I—and all of my favorite people—like to think.
I don’t seen any gain for society by catering to people’s reticence to actually think. We need more thinking, not less. We need more care and deliberation in assessment development, and most every other field.