It’s so very tempting, is it not, to just run with your AI’s answer. It’s all about productivity, right? We’re expected to get more done with this wonderful new tool at our disposal. And checking what seems obviously right seems so laborious and unnecessary. Even though you know something may have been missed or is being misrepresented, however unlikely in the circumstances.

What do you think will happen to you as AI becomes more and more reliable and it seems more and more senseless to be double checking answers? Do you think you will gradually lose critical thinking skills? The skills that got you to where you are today? I do, and so do AI researchers Marc Zao-Sanders and Sara Biuk who introduced the term Thinkslop in a Harvard Business Review article in June to define “… the lazy, sloppy thinking that can be engendered by excessive use of AI.”

Last July, when I posted on LinkedIn about the HBR article, I suggested avoiding Thinkslop by thinking first then consider using AI to enhance your decision making. Fortunately, I followed my own advice recently and proved yet again the importance of maintaining our vigilance when using AI.

I was asked to review a paper using a specific set of review instructions to consider the paper from certain perspectives. I did my own review without AI before asking CoPilot to ignore anything it knows about me and review the paper as per the review instructions. The result? It gave me new perspectives but missed key points I had noted that needed to be raised with the authors.

Next, I asked CoPilot to review the paper after considering what it knows about me and the views I have expressed in my books, blogs and LinkedIn posts. Again, it gave new perspectives but missed the same key points.

Finally, I gave CoPilot my key points and it completely agreed with me.

This exercise revealed that AI and I make a more powerful team when we work together. And the same goes for you too when you avoid shortcuts on important work and do the hard-smart work required of great leaders. As they say, don’t merely be the human in the loop – be the human in the lead!