We need to teach children to interrogate everything. Not with anxiety, but with curiosity. To hold up a piece of information and turn it slowly in the light. To understand that a deepfake isn’t just a technical trick: it’s a weapon, and someone made it for a reason.

To ask not just ‘what does this say?’ but ‘what does this want from me?’

And we need to model this for them.

Critical thinking isn’t just a buzzword. It’s the backbone of every invention, every new idea, every breakthrough product or service. It’s the ability to see connections that others miss, to ask ‘why’ when others say ‘that’ll do’.

But it’s not something that can be downloaded or automated. It’s a muscle that needs constant exercise.

Both artificial intelligence and criminology are close to my heart, so when I came across the recent Sky News report about an AI tool that can apparently condense ‘81 years of detective work’ into just 30 hours, I felt both a surge of excitement and an instinctive need to investigate.

If four in five employees feel unable to perform at their best, then something isn’t working in the way organisations structure and support the modern workplace. And this isn’t about individuals being lazy or disorganised. It’s a structural issue that demands a structural response.

So far, the emerging AI ecosystem has been shaped mostly by a narrow demographic: male, white, and well-resourced.

If AI is the new engine of society, and if it’s trained, built, and maintained mostly by one segment of the population, we should be asking: whose needs will it serve? Whose voices will it amplify, and whose will it overlook?

A comprehensive study published in the journal Societies sheds light on a concerning trend: that individuals aged 17–25 exhibit the highest reliance on AI tools and, correspondingly, the lowest scores in critical thinking assessments. The research indicates a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, underpinned by increased cognitive offloading.

As young adults delegate more cognitive tasks to AI, their capacity for independent analysis and problem-solving diminishes.

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet over the last week, you may have heard about the Willy Wonka immersive event that took place in Glasgow. It’s been hailed as the first ‘AI-generated event’ – for all the wrong reasons.