Is AI Making Your Employees Worse At Thinking?

0:01David Rice: Most AI coverage tells you what happened. AI Signal tells you why it matters. It's a free, five-minute weekly briefing that helps people leaders make sense of the shifts, trade-offs, and decisions hiding behind the AI headlines. Less keeping up, more knowing what to do next. Subscribe to AI Signal at peoplemanagingpeople.com forward slash AI dash signal. More than 70 % of employees report expending less cognitive energy when using generative AI tools. And Dr. Lillian Ajayi-Or thinks companies are structurally undermining the very thing they're paying for. On today's show, I'm talking with Dr. Or, AI lead faculty and lecturer in strategic communication at Columbia University and co-author of The Learning mindset about cognitive debt and why nobody's measuring it.

0:52David Rice: We track seats, logins, prompts, adoption rates. We don't track whether judgment is rising or falling. We don't track cognitive stress. We don't triangulate the level of new technology introduced against the level of new skills actually developed. Radiologists are having a harder time identifying things after using AI than they did before. Dr. Orr is seeing the same pattern in her own classroom. Students struggling more to explain their thinking than they did before these tools existed. The cognition, the strategy, the reasoning is being outsourced. And organizations are releasing the people who carry that institutional knowledge before asking whether they've built the capability to replace it.

1:30David Rice: She told me that a CIO whispered to her recently that most likely they'll release those individuals and find new ones. Dr. Orr thinks that's exactly the wrong argument, that this is a talent revolution. And the organizations that get it are the ones that are investing in people alongside the technology, not instead of them. So today we're covering what cognitive debt is and why nobody's currently measuring it, why skill decay is showing up across industries and what to do about it, the metrics CEOs actually need to assess whether capability is rising or falling, and why this era requires a talent priority, not just a technology priority.

2:05David Rice: I'm David Rice. This is People Managing People. And if your organization is measuring AI success without measuring what it's doing to your people's ability to think, This conversation shows you what's missing from your dashboard. Let's get into it. Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. As always, I'm your host, David Rice. Today, I am joined by Dr. Lillian Ajayore. He's an author, educator, and the AI faculty lead at Columbia University. We're going to be exploring cognitive debts and workforce capability and what meaningful AI upskilling really actually looks like. So I wanted to start with, there's been some research out there that's found that at least more than 70 % employees report expending less cognitive energy when using generative tools in particular.

2:56David Rice: And you're the author of a book called The Learning Mindset, and I think that's the opposite of a learning mindset. So I'm curious, are companies that are deploying AI in a way that sort of structurally undermines the thing that they're paying for? Is that kind of what's happening here? Yeah. I mean, I think what's happening is there's a lot of like meta cognition, like challenges that everybody is confronting. We're not really being open and honest about what we're feeling psychologically and mentally, too. and you know what's happening is because ai is coming into the room and the expectation is set that it's supposed to help you do your work faster more proficient for this more that people are now trying to accommodate this new technology and how the human function naturally and then there's also the pressure of everybody else around you your colleagues your peers your competitors your leaders how they use it and the conversation that they have it even as simple as you know, the cooler, you know, the old cooler chat and even like office chat or even desk chat or even Zoom, like breakout, whatever calls.

4:04We're all talking about how we're using it. And what's what's happening with us is our mind is collecting how you're using it and how I'm using it. And we're making that meta analysis right in our mind. And it's forcing us to force our mind to behave in a way that we're not accustomed to. Yeah. And so when you think about it from a cognitive overload, right? You now are forced to use AI in a way that you've collected the data on how other people use it, as opposed to just trying to figure out what do you need AI to do? And then accommodating that practice and behavior in your current everyday work life.

4:42And so what we try to do in our classroom, even though it is somewhat of an argument and attention thing, where it's like we're reminding our students that your cognitive decision-making process and your critical thinking skills is what's going to keep you in the job, not your ability to accelerate your process using AI. So I think it's, I think it's what's causing this cognitive shift and digression is the fact that people are collecting and reading how others are using AI and they're forcing their brain to work in a way that it's not accustomed to, as opposed to solving the problem on an individualistic background.

5:20So what needs to happen is we need to align. That's something I mentioned in the book is every organization needs a new learning mindset. That it's no longer about creating a culture so that we can learn how to use these tools is more of like self-satisfaction. What I describe in the book as the learning prowess, right? Prowess and masteries of very different conversation. Mastery is what we're in that phase right now. Now, in the run of mastery, we're constantly looking at what everybody else is mastering so that we can become the master of what they've mastered, right? And trying to have that superior understanding.

5:57Whereas the learning prowess is about continuous growth for yourself, understanding where the opportunities, the learning gaps are, which I address in the book as well. And then finding ways to use meaningful tools to close the gap or learn what you need to know in order to use tools and all these other things that are available in your workplace. So I always say that the easiest argument is who is to blame for all the shifts? It's the culture. It's the technological pressure that we all feel every day. And what we get to do in the classroom is we reframe the mindset to say your mind needs protection.

6:34And these tools are no different from all the other tools that we use every day in our lives. And why are we creating unnecessarily efficiency and rush for ourselves? but our mind needs the nurturing that we need to take care of it, to understand it, and then address conflict and business scenarios and business challenges, just like we normally do with the tools and not let the tools guide the thinking. And when that happens, there's a lot of pressure. And I think we get the opportunity to work with students and even students who are in the market for so long and come back to school to reprogram that.

7:10So we give them back the ownership and the authority and say, now go and manage the tool. I don't like the tool of managing.

7:18David Rice: You mentioned a lot of things that, I mean, the cognitive OLO piece, and we're all collecting data on how other people are using it. And I'm curious, like just culturally speaking, because we are hardwired to like push ourselves and do more all the time. And it is almost inevitable in a way that this is where we end up. Yeah, it is. And I think for me in the book with Marshall Go Smith, myth, one of the things, one of the reasons why we built the framework in the book, like the book is governed around the wind mindset. And I think in a stage like this, when we're doing this cognitive comparison, whether we're cognizant or not, we are doing it in just the way the humans work.

7:57It's what drives us sometimes, right? What we try to do is we came up with this framework called the wind and we divided the three parts of the book, which is the W meaning willingness to Learn, which is coupled with the learning prowess. The midsection of the book is intentionality, leadership prowess. And at the end is the end, which is a nurturing, which kind of peels from the coaching prowess. And what we found with this framework is in order to learn, to let learning begin in a new world where AI and all of these different cognitive activities that we are even learning ourselves as humans in the society is by creating something called the prowess map.

8:36in order for prowess to happen, you need some kind of antecedence. You need something to happen to kind of trigger that. And I think the new technological phase that we're in right now forces us to develop new learning patterns. And if we don't direct it in a way that it's somewhat formal and informal at the same time, formal in the sense that there is a construct of the prowess map, informal in the sense that you self-select what you want to learn in the process. and I think if we approach our challenges in the workplace and say, listen, I have new tools, lucky you, because not all organizations can afford these shiny new tools.

9:13For those organizations who can afford it, you should be asking yourself, what is my new prowess map for how I want to do my job effectively? When do I need to pivot to go learn some more? And when can I even learn through peers, network, through conferences like the one that we're in now? And what other resources are there that I can read and build on my knowledge myself? And when do I also collaborate with others so that I'm not fixing this problem alone, which we talk about in the book as well, that the leaders need to create cultures of collaboration and less judgment. So psychological safety is also required in slowing down our brain and the need to expand too much on our cognitive load in comparison in trying to get our work done.

9:58Yeah.

9:59David Rice: No, I think this came up in your talent blueprint session yesterday, if I remember correctly, but we're seeing sort of like this concern about skill decay start to pick up. Right. And we've noticed a, and I think there was a study that radiologists were having a harder time seeing things after using it than they did before. And I think there's a couple other ones in healthcare in particular, but if that's the decay on such like a high stakes situation, I'm curious, like what's the curve on judgment inside your average sort of normal enterprise and are they able to measure it very well in your opinion yeah and you know i want to even give i want to add more parity and examples to that analysis of the radiology stood even with me in my classroom i mean i've been teaching now for over 10 years over a decade and i thought all levels from like pre-college all the way to phd you know doctorate degree students and executives to, you know, young students as well.

10:56And I can tell in terms of the content delivery, when my students work on their assignment, there is a start of shift. Like, I feel like students are struggling more now to explain themselves than they did when we had those AI, like when we didn't have those AI tools. And so the shift is actually being seen across industry. and I'm glad that somebody's actually fessing up to it. And I'm still watching the data because it's not that now that my students have our permission to use this tool, is their writing better? Is everything getting better? I would argue no.

11:29David Rice: I would argue that as well. Because I think like a lot of the cognition, the strategy, the thinking is being assigned. So some students are intentionally opting out of it so that they can come away with it. So when we think about metrics and how do we assess like progress? And I think that's the core question that you're asking. and then we talk about skills delay and skills gap. What's happening in this space is we're spending too much time and I think this is like an ongoing argument that we hear from all the speakers so far. We spend so much time bringing in new products and new services, new tools that we also admit to upskill.

12:07I was talking to one of the CIOs from my second panel today and I told him, I was like, listen, like what's happening when these jobs are getting taken over by AI because you're trying to manage efficiency, what happens to those individuals in that role? Do you guys reskill them before you bring in the new technology or do you release them and then bring in a new technology? And he said, it depends on the scenario. But then he quietly whispered in my ear, it was like, most likely we'll release those individuals and they will just have to find somewhere else to go. And I feel like that's the wrong argument.

12:41I mean, I hate to say this out loud, but institutions are the ones responsible for reskilling and upskilling because they are, to me, I see them as the carrier of your institutional knowledge. And it doesn't matter what levels they are. Every single person existed and they contributed value at some point. And you have the responsibility to keep growing their skills. and as you're mapping out the introduction of new technology you should also in tandem like a symphony orchestra you should also be thinking about what skill set we need to maximize and improve on because imagine getting that letter in your organization saying i'm sorry we have some other technologies in our place human you know working it doesn't make your organization look like you're just as committed to that so when we talk about young people who are joined in the workforce, one of the number one things that they look for is, is this organization investing in me for the long term?

13:40Are they just investing in me for the short term? And a lot of younger, you know, younger workforce and younger professionals are choosing organizations that's going to invest in them for the long haul. And I think that's the shift that we are seeing. And more organization leaders need to talk, think about how do we procure unskilled staff and skilled staff and bring everybody aboard and not just abandon others at ship just because we're shifting to a larger shack.

14:07David Rice: Well, I know you hate to say it out loud, but I'll say it out loud. Well, one of the questions I have about that, though, like is when we think about, you know, this idea of cognitive debt. Who does that sort of belong to? Like, is that a CFO as sort of like a seeing talent as a depreciating asset? Is it the does it sit with the CHRO as a capability gap? or is it the CIO as a sort of a consequence of deployment? Like who has to kind of own that this is happening? And I guess if you were to pick one and defend it, because it's got to be assigned to somebody, who would it be? I know. And then there lies the question, right?

14:45That was a very tough question, even reading it to be like, okay, who do I assign this task with? And it should be clearer to us. And naturally we're going to assign in a CHRO because they are responsible for managing human capital. Right. They are responsible. And because I understand how leadership and operations work in institutions, I know that it's not just the CSRO's responsibility. It's a shared responsibility. You know, one of the things I mentioned earlier that I liked in my leadership from my school is that we're all kind of invested. This is an us problem. We don't do this thing where it's like, oh, let's pass it to you.

15:22Oh, you figure it out. No, no, no, no, no. How do we confront this problem as a group? Because we want to maintain our culture to be one that people are inspired by, motivated by. We create a psychological safety that people need to thrive on the job. And then we also provide them with training so that they know that they can come. Most organizations who are a success, we get this. The McKenzie's of the world, the Apple's of the world, everybody's invested in that employee. Because what we forget is to bring that talent in, it's expensive. to retain the talent even after you've offered the talent the job is expensive and then to keep the talent in your organization after maybe 12 to 24 months is also expensive because now the talent has soaked up the knowledge and they are now more valuable to the marketplace as well so it's you know unless we decide as a c-suite executive as heads of organization that this is going to be a us problem we're always going to have this question and it's always going to make both of us feel uncomfortable like okay who should we legitimately add the problem to it is the chro's problem because they set the priority that the leadership of the organization looks at and i feel like today's calls for a talent priority not a technology priority and i know you guys are you know some of you guys feel this way and we're thinking it we haven't quite screamed it out loud this is a talent revolution that we're in right now and this talent revolution has been around for years and we see it in different cycles.

16:50Back in the day, you know, when Ford came up with the power, everyone thought it was crazy for coming up with Formula One. And then eventually we found that it's okay to design and bring it. And I remember when we started the whole assembly line, like there's just so many different technological manufacturing ideas have come into the place. And I feel like as a society, every so often human cycle will bring in new opportunity, but the talent never shifts. We still need humans to do the work and we need humans to do the work 90 plus percent of the time because we're talking about judgment. We're talking about productivity.

17:30We're talking about strategy. I tell my students all the time that, you know, yes, you can use these tools. They could go away tomorrow, right? But you need to understand how to develop yourself, how to be present, how to collect data, how to have these conversations, how to be strategically communicating your ideas, your value, how to see the gaps, how to understand the data, how to present the problem in a way that it doesn't scare the room, but it forces everyone to be a part of solving the problem. And I think once we make this era, this beautiful era that it's embarking on, a talent opportunity, we will always see this slippery slope.

18:08And the organizations that get it are invested. The university get it that the talent is what they're looking for. and companies are coming to the schools and saying, listen, we want to recruit directly from your graduating class, which is a good thing. But we need all organizations to do it. And the only task that I ask, and I feel like I speak for all my peers is, please create the space for entry-level positions to be available because these individuals are your future leaders. They're your future innovators as well. And if we keep closing mid-tier, we're going to lose them as well. So it's like you bring them in.

18:44Some people look at this podcast and say, well, Lily and I, we have entry level, but what about mid-level? What are you doing with those mid-level staff? Are you letting them go? Are you giving them a second life within your organization?

18:56David Rice: Well, and are we creating the environment for them to learn the things that are going to be resilient? I sat in on a panel for the Upwork presented yesterday about like how much can an agent actually complete in terms of a job? Can it do the whole job? And what they find is, is, you know, this ranges anywhere from like 6 % to maybe 60 % of a job. Yeah. But there's still a vast, a huge portion of any job that you can give it. It just can't do because it can't do a lot of the things that, like an agent can't exercise judgment the way, you know, understand context, historical, you know, reasoning.

19:32David Rice: And, and, and honestly bring to life a vision. Like you mentioned the future innovators. Well, part of what they are are people that bring vision to life. Yeah. And so, yeah, I agree. I, you know, it's when I teach, I, you know, the responsibility of the faculty and we try to do this in our program is to give the value of human strength back to the humans in our classroom. And we hope that they take that into society, into their workplaces as well. And one experiment that I did with my students in my digital communication courses, we, I had them use an AI tool to come up with marketing caption for a social media campaign.

20:10And I said, create yours and then running through the AI system and then let AI also recommend you an updated version of that. And so they all got percentage scores. I mean, some of them got 70 percent. They kept rewriting it. Some of them got 90 percent. And then the interesting thing is the AI, the Gen AI platform doesn't quite understand certain cultural elements. so like it would write it back in all bold letters not knowing that that's screaming at the audience and so my students for so through the experience i told them i was like how many of you guys would still use this tool how many of you guys rely on your own caption and i i'm very big on using these tools to shorten the process but i want to make sure that my students own it and they don't just let the tool design the caption from the onset.

21:01That's not what we're saying. And so because the data needs to, the technology needs to understand how you write, what's your voice, what do you prefer, all of that. It's collecting data on you, just like you're waiting for it to spit out feedback. And so my students were like, we will write it because the good news for them was the technology rated their own caption much higher than the ones that he did or she or whatever the technology did. And it was quite surprising to them to be like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I actually am a better copywriter than the Gen AI tool. And I'm like, see, because it's easy for us to just kind of release the power and let the technology tool do the work thinking they're better than us.

21:43And my students were like, you know, even the ones that were struggling, they were like, I could see why they got a better score on their own CAP ship than us, because we didn't spend as much time co-creating hours. And so these are the things that we, you know, challenge in the classroom to remind our students that the human strength is more palatable than you think.

22:03David Rice: Companies measure AI adoptions, you know, seats, logins, prompts, things like this, right? This is how they measure it. But if you were to design a measurement that would actually tell a CEO whether capability was rising or falling, you know, what does that look like? I know. and that's a very it's a tough metric because i'm a data scientist too and i think what i try to do in my book with marshall go smith is the coaching prowess and nurturing part i think all the data analysis the reporting that we currently exist right now works in terms of you know what's the usability what's the adoption rate what's the velocity what's the return on investment but one One thing we don't measure, the two things that you and I have kind of alluded to that we don't measure is, you know, what is the empathy that we have as an organization?

22:54I think, you know, in adopting new tools and introducing new tool, are we lessening the cognitive stress that your employees, we're not measuring that we should. What is the cognitive stress level? I did a presentation in Istanbul at the Global Leadership Summit. And one of the things that I said in my presentation is that this expediency environment that we've created, it's now created a new leadership challenge, which is stress, burnout, and you can name it all. And so I think we need a measurement on that. And as a CEO of a company, I need to understand the health and the well-being of my employee.

23:30Well-being is a thing that came at post-pandemic. And I think well-being should be a metric in that report that we're also looking at to measure true ROI. because yes, we want to make, you know, quadruple our, you know, our profit from year over year, but how is, what's the health of your organization? What's the well-being of your organization? How much empathy and sympathy are we even doing? And then what about the upscaling and rescaling? That should be a measurement as well, that the level of new technology being introduced and let's partner up with, let's kind of triangulate the data and say, all right, this is the level of new technology we brought in.

24:10What's the level of new skills that we develop? And how many of them are they being re-skilled because of these technologies that we introduced?

24:17David Rice: I couldn't agree more. Well, unfortunately, we are up against time. So I can't ask you any more questions, but I could talk to you all day. But thank you for coming on the show. This has been great. It was a really good conversation. Yeah, thank you for having me. And I hope to see you soon. Well, listeners, if you haven't done so already, head on over to peoplemanagingpeople.com forward slash subscribe. get signed up for the newsletter you'll get this podcast and everything else that we create straight to your inbox and until next time