Tag: automation bias

Critical Thinking and GenAI: Why Human-in-the-Loop Needs Cognitive Friction

Critical Thinking and GenAI: Why Human-in-the-Loop Needs Cognitive Friction

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

After viewing my recent International Project Management Day presentation on Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) practices, an attendee asked a simple but profound question:

“This all makes sense. But how do we actually implement it?”

That question has stayed with me.

I expended a lot of energy in 2025, through blog posts and presentations, describing the limitations of generative AI (GenAI) in practical applications. But it’s one thing to agree that generative AI introduces risk. It’s another to design workflows that preserve human judgment in the presence of fluent, confident, probabilistic systems.

Now the designers of GenAI have jumped into the fray. Recently, Anthropic issued a public statement regarding the U.S. Department of Defense’s use of Claude. The statement included this line:

“…without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon to exercise the critical judgment that our highly trained professional troops exhibit every day.”

The domain there is defense. Ours is content, strategy, and project leadership. But the principle transfers cleanly.

AI systems do not exercise judgment. Humans do.

The risk in everyday professional environments is not that GenAI will launch weapons. The risk is quieter: that we gradually outsource evaluation, synthesis, and dissent. That we begin to accept fluency as understanding. That we mistake coherence for truth.

In last month’s post, I examined the effects of cognitive shortcuts—automation bias, and confirmation bias—that can crop up in our use of GenAI. But the deeper concern isn’t simply bias. It is the potential erosion of critical thinking.

If GenAI reduces friction, we must intentionally reintroduce the right kind of friction.

In this post, I’ll explore:

  • Why AI-assisted workflows can quietly weaken critical thinking
  • Where Human-in-the-Loop fits along the spectrum of human–AI collaboration
  • What Cognitive Forcing Functions (CFFs) are—and what recent research says about their impact
  • Practical ways to design cognitive friction into professional workflows

The goal is not to slow AI adoption. It is to ensure that efficiency does not come at the expense of judgment.

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Cognitive Bias in GenAI Use: From Groupthink to Human Mitigation

Cognitive Bias in GenAI Use: From Groupthink to Human Mitigation

Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

“When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer; superstition ain’t the way.”

–Stevie Wonder, “Superstition,” 1972

I thought of the words of Stevie Wonder’s song “Superstition” the day after I spent a late night doomscrolling social media, desperate for news about a recent national tragedy that touched a local family. I ended up taking a sleeping pill to get some reprieve and a decent night’s sleep.

While doomscrolling on social media is a uniquely modern phenomenon, the desire to seek confirmation and validation through affinity is not. It’s a form of Groupthink. After all, we choose to “follow” folks who are amused (or perhaps “consumed”?) by the same things we are. Cat video, anyone?

In the 21st century, Groupthink isn’t limited to groups anymore. It’s now personal and as close as your mobile phone or desktop. The intimate version of Groupthink began with social media memes and comments and has quickly expanded to include generative AI (GenAI) engagement.

Intellectually, we have mostly come to understand that Groupthink drives our social media feeds—with the help of overly accommodating algorithms. Now, similar dynamics are quietly emerging in how we use GenAI. Cognitive biases that seep into GenAI engagement, especially automation bias and confirmation bias, can warp our content and projects unless we understand what these biases are, how they manifest, and how to manage them.

A Quick Refresher on Groupthink

Irving Janis, an American professor of psychology, first defined the term ” Groupthink ” in 1972 as a “mode of thinking that people engage in when they are involved in a cohesive in-group, when members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” In other words, we go along to get along, as the American idiom goes.

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