Last year, researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University revealed surprising evidence about how the use of AI impacts how people think – and how intensely. They found that among more than 300 knowledge workers, relying too heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT was associated with decreased critical thinking skills.
The study, mirrored by findings from research conducted by MIT, suggests that even using AI for low-stakes tasks such as proofreading “may lead to significant negative outcomes in high-stakes contexts” like drafting legal documents, the study’s authors wrote.
For the younger generation of digital natives facing the anxiety of AI keeping up with their tech-using peers and AI displacing them from their jobs, the fear that technology will make people dumber is dominant. But that hasn’t stopped them from using AI, even when they’re explicitly told not to.
A Wharton-led survey released earlier this year, conducted in partnership with Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, found that young people are increasingly using AI, even as their concerns that it causes lazy thinking persist. An October 2025 survey of nearly 2,500 U.S. adults ages 18 to 28 found that 79% of respondents believed AI is making people lazier, and 62% said they fear it will make people less intelligent.
“What we’re seeing is a deep ambivalence about how Gen Z plans (to) use AI,” said Benjamin Lira Luttges, a postdoctoral researcher at Wharton who led the research for the report. Fortune.
Despite these fears, members of Generation Z have increased their use of AI. Pew Research Center data released in June reveals that 66% of people aged 18 to 29 have already used an AI chatbot, such as ChatGPT, up from 55% in 2024. However, 37% of these young adults said they thought AI’s impact on them over the next 20 years would be negative, the most pessimistic attitude of any age group surveyed.
The paradox of Gen Z’s willingness to use AI in the office, even amid lingering concerns about the technology’s impact on critical thinking, lays bare the younger generation’s complex feelings about AI, according to the report’s authors. After all, the strained relationship between Gen Z and AI runs deep. Nearly a fifth of the generation is worried about AI supplanting them at work, and yet they are leading the workplace in AI adoption.
While it requires some decoding, Gen Z’s confused attitudes toward AI may be key in charting a path forward for the technology, more broadly, to be better integrated into the workplace, Lira Luttges suggested.
“Young people are driving the adoption of new technologies, and a lot of things that are often considered fringe, not mainstream, are adopted by young people and eventually become part of the mainstream,” he said. “So in a sense… looking at Gen Z is a way of looking towards the future of work. »
What are Gen Z’s tense feelings about AI?
Lira Luttges speculates that the most important mental factor influencing Gen Z’s attitude toward AI is simply a penchant for immediate gratification, a disposition more important in younger, developing minds.
“There is a legitimate trade-off between the benefits and costs of using AI,” he said. “Our brains are wired to prefer immediate, smaller rewards over long-term, delayed rewards. »
As Gen Z struggles to find or keep a job, as well as climb the career ladder, AI-enhanced job performance may be more appealing than the less tangible threat of loss of critical thinking skills. Likewise, even if an employer doesn’t want an employee to use AI for certain tasks, those workers, particularly if they are young, might consider it more important to complete their tasks efficiently, especially if the risk of getting caught is slow, Lira Luttges noted.
Anyone, not just Gen Z, could also fall victim to the above-average effect, a statistically impossible phenomenon whereby most people generally believe they are above average at a given task. Gen Z survey respondents, for example, may consider themselves power users of AI, Lira Luttges said. Sure, AI might atrophy critical thinking skills and make others lazy, but not those taking the survey.
How will Generation Z shape the future of work?
To maximize the way AI is used in the workplace, employers should not ban it, but rather adopt an ambivalent attitude toward it, the report’s authors say. According to the survey, respondents who reported using AI more frequently were less worried about its impact on intelligence and motivation, indicating that AI anxiety may disappear over time.
But resolving AI anxiety doesn’t resolve the question of how AI use impacts critical thinking. Some future of work experts, including Mark Beasley, professor and director of the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University, believe that a lack of critical thinking, not a lack of AI skills, will pose a serious threat to organizational pipelines and business operations. Beasley said. Fortune The threat AI poses to entry-level jobs could mean insufficient training and experience for mid-level and even senior-level positions in the near future.
“The biggest risk organizations face is simply stagnation,” he said.
But as long as workplaces are intentional about how they implement AI, Lira Luttges said the technology won’t have a significant impact on critical thinking.
“For every task, there are two types of effort,” Lira Luttges said. “There’s effort that’s task-related, that’s intrinsic to what you’re doing, and that kind of effort is the effort that you put in that translates into learning. But there’s a lot of effort that’s just there, it’s like friction, that doesn’t really teach you anything.”
“You should outsource the bullshit, not the craft,” he added.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on January 30, 2026.
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