Once Upon a Thought: Learning to Think With the Machine

What does it mean to think critically in the age of generative artificial intelligence? The question feels both familiar and unsettling: we have always taught “critical thinking,” but how do we assess it when AI can generate text, image, video, sound, argument, and example? The deeper question is what kind of thinking remains for learners when machines now produce reasoning itself. In higher education, learners increasingly declare their use of generative AI and are asked to reflect on how the technology contributed to their work. Yet reflective prompts are often too broad. Many offer surface responses (“I used ChatGPT to draft my introduction”) rather than examining how AI’s reasoning contained errors, assumptions, or reasoning traps that may have shaped, or redirected, their own thinking. Did they follow their own train of thought or simply the one the machine suggested?This workshop challenges the assumption that learners merely need to “learn critical thinking skills.” Drawing on the provocation that we should stop trying to teach critical thinking and instead cultivate a critical spirit, it explores what happens when AI becomes not only a tool but an interlocutor or collaborator. Participants will co-design a discipline-specific reflection guide to help learners critically evaluate AI-generated outputs. The session draws on guiding principles that position AI as a partner in thinking, integrate human inquiry with digital reasoning, and connect frameworks of thought with intellectual standards. By the end, participants will leave with practical templates and renewed insight into critical thinking as judgment in context, learning not to ban the machine, but to think with it, through it, and at times against it.