Is Artificial Intelligence ‘Killing’ Decision-Making Capabilities? We Asked Young Professionals

Akula Sushma, a 30-year-old who works at Capgemini in Virginia, says AI has reduced the amount of thinking or brainstorming she does on her own. She also agreed that she is becoming less confident in her own judgment and instincts and believes the technology is affecting her ability to make decisions independently.

Divya Garg, a 29-year-old Head of Content at one of India’s leading podcasting companies, uses AI for almost every task. She is “overly dependent” on it, and says that should AI tools become unavailable, it would hamper her work.

Pedro Lujan, a university student from Medellín, Colombia, says he uses AI almost every day and often multiple times.

The International Business Times interviewed more than 10 young professionals and university students about how AI is impacting their decision-making process. Is it simply helping us work faster and more efficiently, or are users increasingly depending on it for decision-making, creating the potential for unexpected difficulties?

Individuals working in areas like sales, content creation, technology, and academia opened up about how dependent they have become on AI to complete daily tasks.

Daniel Lafaurie, 21, also a student from Colombia, says he doesn’t trust AI blindly, and past mistakes have made him cautious. He calls AI an editor, not a thinker.

Twenty-four-year-old Vaishnavi Bhardwaj, who works at one of India’s leading multimedia news organizations, says that if AI became unavailable for a week, her work would slow down a bit. She chooses AI’s “quick suggestions” over her own decision-making.

The exception was Gautam Gulati, a 30-year-old Sales Manager at a mutual fund company in India. He said: “I trust it without verification, mostly.” He says AI has significantly reduced his brainstorming process.

The answers mirror what researchers call “cognitive offloading,” the process of assigning mental tasks to technology.

A 2022 paper published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence found that while AI-powered tools can improve immediate performance and efficiency, they may also reduce independent learning, memory retention, and skill development over time.

A study by Harvard Business School highlights that AI-generated advice benefited users who already have strong judgment and decision-making skills. People who do not have those skills struggle to translate AI guidance into better outcomes.

A separate study published this week from Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Alex Chan found that professionals aren’t questioning AI-assisted advice thoroughly.

What’s more, excessive reliance on AI can reduce decision quality, particularly among individuals who place greater trust in AI systems, according to another study published in the journal Nature.

Together, these findings suggest that AI is most effective when used as a tool to support human judgment rather than replace it.

Similarly, most respondents in the interviews said AI made their work faster and easier, but also admitted that they spend less time doing their own research, brainstorming ideas, and thinking through problems from scratch.

This does not mean young professionals are becoming less intelligent. However, AI is changing how they allocate their mental effort. Tasks that once required memory, critical thinking, research, and brainstorming are increasingly being handled by AI.

The biggest benefit is speed and efficiency. But the potential risk is that people may gradually lose the habit of thinking through challenges on their own. Ultimately, whether artificial intelligence reduces people’s capacity for independent thinking depends less on the technology and more on how humans choose to use it.