As one New York financier told Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, new hires who were seen as “AI natives” are turning out to have alarmingly shallow ideas. So much so, the anonymous finance worker admitted, that his firm now actively avoids seeking out AI-literate STEM graduates, and opts to comb through humanities students instead…

The state of higher education is so bad that many of today’s higher ed students are not only offloading their coursework to AI chatbots like ChatGPT — a shortcut, educators say, that’s even impacting their ability to participate in face-to-face discussions. Bosses Horrified as “AI Native” College Graduates Hit the Workplace – https://futurism.com/future-society/college-critical-thinking-ai

Yikes.

Deeply disturbing. So what can a concerned parent do?

Ask ChatGPT what to do!

My college graduate son has no critical thinking skills after relying upon ChatGPT. What should I do?

Treat this as a skills-and-habits problem, not a character flaw or a “ChatGPT ruined him” problem. A lot of recent graduates learned to use AI as a shortcut before they learned how to think through ambiguity on their own. The good news is that critical thinking is trainable.

A few things matter here:

1. Don’t turn this into a fight about technology
2. Separate competence from confidence
3. Create situations where he has to reason, decide, and defend conclusions

What often happens is:

• Students get very good at producing polished answers
• But weak at:
  • evaluating evidence
  • making tradeoffs
  • spotting bad assumptions
  • persisting through confusion
  • forming independent judgment

Those are different skills.

Here’s what tends to work better than lectures about “kids relying on AI.”

Change how he uses AI

The goal is not “stop using ChatGPT.” It’s “use it as a sparring partner instead of a vending machine.”

Encourage rules like:

• No copying answers directly
• He must form an opinion first
• He must explain why an answer is correct
• He must ask AI to critique his reasoning instead of replacing it

Good prompts:

• “Challenge my assumptions.”
• “What are the strongest counterarguments?”
• “What evidence would disprove this?”
• “What am I overlooking?”
• “Give me three competing interpretations.”

Bad pattern:

• “Write this for me.”

Put him in environments that punish shallow thinking

Critical thinking develops fastest when reality pushes back.

Good environments:

• Jobs with responsibility and consequences
• Sales
• Operations
• Managing projects
• Technical troubleshooting
• Apprenticeships
• Debate-heavy workplaces
• Entrepreneurship
• Volunteer leadership

Real-world feedback is hard to fake.

Ask questions instead of giving conclusions

If you immediately correct him, he stays mentally passive.

Instead ask:

• “How did you arrive at that?”
• “What evidence supports it?”
• “What would change your mind?”
• “What’s the downside of your approach?”
• “What assumption are you making?”

That forces metacognition.

Make him defend positions he disagrees with

One of the fastest ways to build reasoning is:

• argue both sides
• compare tradeoffs
• steelman opposing views

You can do this casually over dinner or current events.

Encourage slow thinking

A lot of AI-heavy habits create intellectual impatience.

Critical thinking often requires:

• sitting with uncertainty
• reading longer material
• comparing sources
• wrestling with incomplete information

Books, long-form journalism, analytical podcasts, and difficult projects help rebuild that stamina.

Watch for learned helplessness

Sometimes the issue is not inability but reflexive dependence:

• “I don’t know immediately”
  → “I need AI to think for me”

A useful rule:

• Spend 15–30 minutes thinking independently before asking AI.

Also be realistic about the transition to adulthood

Many graduates — long before AI existed — left college without strong judgment skills. Those usually develop through:

• responsibility
• mistakes
• work
• relationships
• financial pressure
• repeated decision-making

You do not need to panic because he’s behind in one area at graduation.

The biggest mistake parents make here is trying to “convince” an adult child that he lacks critical thinking. That usually triggers defensiveness and dependency at the same time.

A better posture is:

• respect him as an adult
• expect reasoning and accountability
• ask probing questions
• stop rescuing poor decisions too quickly
• encourage environments that require independent judgment

If you want, I can also help you with:

• signs that this is normal vs genuinely concerning
• exercises that rebuild critical thinking quickly
• how to talk to him without sounding accusatory
• ways young professionals can use AI without weakening reasoning skills