Outsourcing Thought: Overreliance & AI

[Note: these questions were written in the summer of 2026. It seems that every aspect of AI’s development, usage, and impact is evolving at a rapid pace. Take that into account and use relevant, recent information in formulating your answers and arguments.]

1. Think of all the things your ancestors used to be able to do that most people cannot do anymore—milk cows, churn cream, weave rope, plow with horses, can fruits and vegetables, butcher pigs, etc. Or, to use a more recent lens: do math in their heads, find books in a library, bake cakes from scratch, etc. Sure, we mostly have substitutes, unless we are in the cast of some dystopian movie or a reality television series where we are trapped naked on a desert island. Is this a real problem to worry about, or will substitutes always be there? What do you think? Why?
2. Do you worry, as some speakers in the video do, about AI replacing thinking in general (or real learning by students in medical school) so that if an AI tool reports a hallucination as true (or misdiagnoses a patient), the human relying on AI won’t be able to identify or correct that AI error?
3. Do you agree that there’s a material difference between a teacher with 25 years’ experience using AI to improve her classes on the one hand, and a high school student using AI as a substitute for learning how to read critically or to write clearly? Why or why not?
4. Do you agree with the observation that the internet, which has so much to offer, has also become an abundant source of lies and false facts that one may argue has left many of us more ignorant, less able to think critically, and more subject to conspiracy theories? Has the internet had, on balance, a negative impact on human thinking or learning? What is your opinion on that issue? Support your argument with evidence.
5. We know AI is already being widely used to spread lies and false information on the internet just like social media. Do you foresee AI producing net improvement or net degradation of humans’ ability to learn, to think critically, to spot mistakes and outright lies, and to parse the truth from an ever-increasing amount of cleverly presented false information? Support your argument with evidence.
6. Have you noticed in yourself a weakening of certain critical brain skills caused by your use of AI to do tasks you formerly did for yourself using your own brain? If so, give examples. If not, do you think this concern about overreliance is itself overblown? Why or why not?
7. Many are now stressing the importance of “AI education” for our students. What would a good “AI education” look like for grade schoolers, high school kids, and college students? What skills are necessary to minimize people’s vulnerability to AI overreliance? What could be incorporated in a course on AI literacy that you think could be useful to you?
8. I.T. professors studied two groups of students who were assigned to write an essay. One group’s members could use ChatGPT to help them, and the other group’s members had to rely on their own brains. Brain scans showed greater electrical activity in the brains of the students who did not use ChatGPT. Does this surprise you? It also showed that most of the students who used ChatGPT to write the essay could not, just a few minutes later, recall a single sentence that they had “written.” Not so with the students who used their own brains to write their essay. Again, does that surprise you? Why or why not?
9. Importantly, the M.I.T. scientists then had the students swap roles and write a paper on the same topic. The subjects who originally had to rely only on their brains but now could use ChatGPT recorded the highest brain activity once they were allowed to use ChatGPT. However, the students who initially used ChatGPT but now had to write the essay using only their own brain power never did reach as high a level of brain activity as the other group. What lessons can we draw from this result?
10. A study by a Swiss professor found that higher usage of AI tools correlated with a decline in critical thinking skills due to “cognitive offloading,” which happens when people reduce their own engagement in deep, reflective thinking by using external tools such as AI instead. Does this sound plausible to you? Does your own experience using AI provide support for or against the findings in the M.I.T. and Swiss studies?

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AI Ethics Companion Handbook

This e-book compiles all the resources on AI ethics available on the Ethics Unwrapped website. It will continue to be updated as new materials are published.

A recent resource from Ethics Unwrapped is a book, Behavioral Ethics in Practice: Why We Sometimes Make the Wrong Decisions, written by Cara Biasucci and Robert Prentice. This accessible book is amply footnoted with behavioral ethics studies and associated research. It also includes suggestions at the end of each chapter for related Ethics Unwrapped videos and case studies. Some instructors use this resource to educate themselves, while others use it in lieu of (or in addition to) a textbook.

The most recent article written by Cara Biasucci and Robert Prentice describes the basics of behavioral ethics and introduces Ethics Unwrapped videos and supporting materials along with teaching examples. It also includes data on the efficacy of Ethics Unwrapped for improving ethics pedagogy across disciplines. Published in Journal of Business Law and Ethics Pedagogy (Vol. 1, August 2018), it can be downloaded here: “Teaching Behavioral Ethics (Using “Ethics Unwrapped” Videos and Educational Materials).”

Cara Biasucci also wrote a chapter on integrating Ethics Unwrapped in higher education, which can be found in the latest edition of Teaching Ethics: Instructional Models, Methods and Modalities for University Studies. The chapter includes examples of how Ethics Unwrapped is used at various universities.

An article written by Ethics Unwrapped authors Minette Drumwright, Robert Prentice, and Cara Biasucci introduce key concepts in behavioral ethics and approaches to effective ethics instruction—including sample classroom assignments. Published in the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, it can be downloaded here: “Behavioral Ethics and Teaching Ethical Decision Making.”

A detailed article written by Robert Prentice, with extensive resources for teaching behavioral ethics, was published in Journal of Legal Studies Education and can be downloaded here: “Teaching Behavioral Ethics.”

Another article by Robert Prentice, discussing how behavioral ethics can improve the ethicality of human decision-making, was published in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. It can be downloaded here: “Behavioral Ethics: Can It Help Lawyers (And Others) Be their Best Selves?”

A dated (but still serviceable) introductory article about teaching behavioral ethics can be accessed through Google Scholar by searching: Prentice, Robert A. 2004. “Teaching Ethics, Heuristics, and Biases.” Journal of Business Ethics Education 1 (1): 57-74.