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adsOrganisations everywhere are racing to build AI capability. Employees are being taught how to use ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and other generative AI tools. Workshops on prompting are becoming commonplace. Companies are experimenting with AI agents, automation and new ways of embedding artificial intelligence into everyday work. All of this is necessary. But I worry that we may be concentrating so much on teaching people how to use AI that we are neglecting something even more fundamental: teaching people how to think. In an earlier article, AI and the Rise of the Efiko, I argued that artificial intelligence is fundamentally an amplifier. Put powerful AI in the hands of an “Efiko” – someone who is curious, capable and committed to learning and it can dramatically increase what that person can accomplish. Put the same technology in the hands of an “olodo”, someone who lacks the underlying capacity to think, question and exercise judgement, and AI can just as easily amplify mediocrity. Recent research makes this issue increasingly important. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies AI and big data as the fastest-growing skills, which is hardly surprising. What is more interesting is what sits alongside them. Analytical thinking remains the number one core skill identified by employers, while creative thinking ranks fourth. Employers therefore appear to be telling us something important: the future requires technological capability and human thinking capability, not one or the other. “Critical thinking enables people to interrogate information rather than simply consume it. It involves questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, recognising bias, distinguishing fact from inference and asking whether conclusions logically follow from the information available.” There is another reason to be concerned. A 2025 study by researchers from Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University examined how people exercise critical thinking when using AI. Among its findings was an association between greater confidence in AI and lower levels of critical-thinking effort. The researchers also found that AI changes the nature of critical thinking, placing greater emphasis on activities such as verifying information, integrating responses and maintaining oversight of the task. This presents organisations with an interesting paradox. AI can dramatically enhance human capability, but if we become too dependent on it, we may weaken some of the very capabilities required to use it effectively. adsads Consider a typical employee using AI to solve a business problem. Within seconds, AI can summarise the problem, analyse information, suggest alternatives, prepare a presentation and recommend a course of action. Impressive. But who determines whether the problem has been correctly defined? Who questions the assumptions behind the analysis? Who recognises that an important piece of information is missing? Who distinguishes a genuinely innovative solution from an attractive but impractical one? And ultimately, who decides what the organisation should do? The answer remains the human being. This is why I believe organisations embracing AI must simultaneously make deliberate investments in three capabilities: critical thinking, creative problem-solving and decision-making. Critical thinking enables people to interrogate information rather than simply consume it. It involves questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, recognising bias, distinguishing fact from inference and asking whether conclusions logically follow from the information available. In the age of AI, this becomes particularly important because generative AI can produce answers that sound authoritative even when they are incomplete or wrong. Creative problem-solving goes further. Innovation rarely begins with having the right answer. It often begins with defining the right problem. Organisations routinely spend enormous amounts of energy solving symptoms while leaving underlying problems untouched. Creative problem solvers reframe challenges, connect apparently unrelated ideas, generate alternatives and experiment with different possibilities. AI can dramatically expand the number of possibilities available to us, but people must still determine which problems are worth solving and which possibilities are worth pursuing. Related News NiMet moves to close climate information gap for farmers The interinstitutional void (3): Making government whole Artificial intelligence will not wipe us out. Humanity must come first in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Then comes decision-making. AI can provide information, identify patterns, model scenarios and recommend options, but organisational decisions involve context, trade-offs, uncertainty, values and consequences. Someone still must exercise judgement. Indeed, as AI gives managers access to more information and more alternatives, the capacity to make disciplined decisions may become more important rather than less.adsads These three capabilities form an important foundation for innovation. Critical thinking helps us challenge what exists. Creative problem-solving helps us imagine what could exist. Decision-making enables us to choose what we will pursue. AI can augment every stage of that process, but it cannot compensate for consistently poor thinking around it. This has significant implications for learning and development. Many organisations are currently developing AI training programmes, and rightly so. Employees need AI literacy. They need to understand the tools available to them, how to prompt effectively, where AI can improve productivity, and the ethical and governance issues associated with its use. But that cannot be the entire curriculum. For every investment in teaching employees how to use AI, organisations should be asking what they are doing to strengthen the thinking capabilities that sit behind its use. When last did your organisation deliberately teach critical thinking? Do employees know how to structure and diagnose problems? Are managers trained in disciplined decision-making techniques? Do people have opportunities to experiment, challenge assumptions and solve real organisational problems? The organisations that gain the greatest advantage from AI may therefore not necessarily be those that adopt the most AI tools or train the most employees in prompting. They may be those that combine powerful technology with people who know how to think. Teaching people to use AI is important. But it is not enough. If organisations want AI to produce better innovation, better decisions and ultimately better results, they must invest just as deliberately in the capabilities of the people sitting behind the prompts. In the age of artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important investment we can make is still in human intelligence. Omagbitse Barrow is the chief executive of Efiko Management Consulting, and he supports organisations and leaders to translate their strategy into results.
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