AI, Critical Thinking, and Learning - Michelle Miller
This video featuring Michelle Miller examines concerns that artificial intelligence may weaken students’ critical thinking skills. It challenges the idea that critical thinking is a single, general-purpose ability, explaining instead that sophisticated reasoning is often context- and discipline-specific and must be deliberately developed through practice, challenging problems, and meaningful feedback.
Rather than assuming AI will automatically diminish critical thinking, the discussion argues that educators should focus on how students actually build these skills. Strong foundational knowledge remains essential for drawing inferences, understanding cause and effect, and questioning assumptions. AI tools may support both sides of this process by helping educators create more engaging problem-solving activities and providing students with personalized retrieval practice, tutoring, and opportunities to strengthen their knowledge and reasoning skills.
Speaker Biography
Michelle Miller is the author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology (Harvard University Press, 2014), Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World (West Virginia University Press, 2022), and the forthcoming book The Attention Spectrum: How Attention Really Works and How to Make It Work for You (W.W. Norton, Spring 2027). Dr. Miller completed her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles and currently serves as a professor of psychological sciences and the executive director of the Institute for Advancing Applications in Artificial Intelligence at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
