The Value of Thinking

Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking? by Derek Thompson, Cal Newport
Plain English With Derek Thompson, August 6, 2025

Amid the AI boom, what habits, skills, and thinking patterns should we value? And teach our students to value? Derek Thompson and Cal Newport answer these questions and more in a comprehensive conversation. Both writers discuss how students and professors now operate; recent studies related to task completion and brain activity when using AI; and the decline in deep reading and writing. They cover concepts and practices that are of value for educators to know and consider: real-time pedagogy demonstrations, supporting the cognitive equivalent of "time under tension," and having "comfort with cognitive discomfort." Thompson and Newport speak to the ways in which AI can enhance one's professional or personal life; they are also wary of its harm on thinking, especially as it relates to the "one-two punch" of reading and writing that "literally changes our brain." Newport's observations expand educators' understanding of how children use AI as a "parasocial" technology. Meanwhile, Thompson's argument for classes resembling dissertation defenses and helping students to become "masters of cognitive time under tension" can spark a discussion for schools to reflect on their academic philosophies and best practices. With its easy-to-follow conversation and thought-provoking questions, this podcast episode is a worthwhile listen.