GenAI – DK Consulting of Colorado

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

February 28, 2026March 3, 2026Debra 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.

Cognitive Bias in GenAI Use: From Groupthink to Human Mitigation

January 31, 2026March 3, 2026Debra 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.

Thistle-Tomes Volume 2

December 31, 2025January 31, 2026Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

I was struck by a social media post recently that suggested that the next honoree for the Presidential Medal of Freedom ought to be the little boy, Victor, who, in the midst of an armed attack on his Minneapolis school, threw himself protectively on top of his friend and classmate. And was subsequently shot in the back himself. (Both boys are recovering.)

It was the absolute humanity of the moment that stayed with me—the instinct to protect, to help. I have written a great deal lately about artificial intelligence, especially GenAI (Claude, ChatGPT, Poe, etc.). The contrast is clear: GenAI is a probabilistic algorithm with an overly pleasing interface. Victor (no last name was ever given) is a human who, in the face of inhumanity, acted out of love and concern for others.

In the spirit of that contrast, I have added a few more thoughts to my list of Thistle-Tomes, which I started last December. Please feel free to add your own.

GenAI in Professional Settings: Adoption Trends and Use Cases

September 30, 2025February 28, 2026Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

Some content and project professionals are making their GenAI wishes come true, some are still contemplating their first wish, and some feel trapped in the genie’s bottle. Such is the current state of GenAI use within organizational boundaries.

In the past few weeks, I have been engaging with practitioners through events and private discussions on the application of GenAI to everyday work. Most notably, I recently delivered a recorded presentation on Human-in-the-Loop for IPM Day 2025, set for release on November 6; led a virtual session for the PMI Chapter of Baton Rouge on September 17, 2025, titled “GenAI: The Attractive Nuisance in Your Project”; and participated in an October 2 webcast, “An Imperfect Dance: Responsible GenAI Use.”

What folks told me didn’t always surprise me.

What they told me matched, for the most part, some of the GenAI adoption patterns I’ve been researching. I’ll share those trends, as well as common and emerging use cases and persistent drawbacks, in this month’s blog post.

A New Code for Communicators: Ethics for an Automated Workplace

August 31, 2025September 7, 2025Debra W Kahn (@debrawk.bsky.social)

What happens when you’re asked to document a product that doesn’t exist—or to release content before it’s been validated? Those of us who have been outside of corporate culture for a while forget that our still-enmeshed colleagues regularly make ethical decisions about their content work. But I began recalling some of my own experiences recently, cringing the whole time.

Early in my career, a colleague at a small manufacturing firm quietly informed me that our newest product, recently presented to the firm’s most important client, was a prototype, not the final design. So, I was basically documenting vaporware. Later in my career, the manager of our small but busy editorial and production group at a large high-tech company stopped by my cubicle one day to tell me that I had to “change my whole personality.” Apparently, the larger department was no longer as concerned about content quality as she perceived I was.

Of course, nothing beats the ethical situation I found myself in as a fledgling business owner, which I described in last month’s blog post. But you get the point.

Fast forward to today. The ethical complexities presented by GenAI in the workplace are multifold. I discussed some of those complexities in my June 2025 blog post. Luckily, we don’t have to face the wave of complexities alone.

We can use existing ethical frameworks for GenAI development, adoption, and use to inform a new ethical code for communicators.

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A Quick Refresher on Groupthink

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