This work is done during my internship @msftresearch.bsky.social. Huge thanks to my incredible mentors and collaborators: @advaitsarkar.bsky.social @levlevlev.bsky.social Ian, Sean, Richard, and Nick!

We can boost motivation by positioning critical reflection as professional growth—not just extra auditing. Strengthen ability with AI reasoning explanations, guided critiques, and cross-references. Think of GenAI as a provocateur—encouraging workers to refine outputs confidently.

Our findings show GenAI tools should enhance motivators (like quality standards, skill-building) and mitigate inhibitors (time constraints, low awareness) to preserve critical thinking, e.g., proactive prompts can spotlight overlooked tasks, while reactive features offer on-demand assistance.

We observed a shift from “execution” to “stewardship.” GenAI automates tasks like info-gathering or content creation, but workers now invest effort in verification, editing, and alignment with project needs. This pattern emerges widely across different roles and tasks.

GenAI often lowers perceived effort for critical thinking—especially when users trust its capabilities. Interestingly, those confident in their own expertise tend to dig deeper, spending extra time verifying and refining AI outputs.

Their reports are in line with the longstanding balancing of effort at work. In high-stakes tasks requiring high accuracy, they report engaging in more perceived ​effort, including thinking critically. In low-stakes routine tasks with high time pressure, they report engaging in less perceived effort

Knowledge workers rely on critical thinking with GenAI to maintain work quality. They define it as setting clear goals, refining prompts, and verifying outputs against external sources and their own expertise. They’re driven by the need to avoid errors, improve work quality, and hone skills.

We surveyed 319 knowledge workers from diverse fields, collecting 936 real-world GenAI-assisted tasks. We asked: When is critical thinking necessary? How do they enact it? Does GenAI affect the effort of critical thinking—and how much?

We found that…

We ground our discussion using Bloom’s Taxonomy, focusing on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In a GenAI-driven workflow, each of these cognitive activities faces new challenges—and opportunities—for deeper critical engagement.

GenAI is everywhere in the knowledge workflow—from drafting emails to sparking new ideas. But as usage soars, how do we balance its benefits with mindful, reflective work? To design GenAI for better critical thinking, we must first understand how it is currently affecting knowledge work.

Not at all Ketan! I really appreciated your thoughtful comments on the paper! This is also an amazing opportunity for me to really understand how people feel about our work. I am truly humbled and appreciated!

Massive thanks to my advisor @sauvik.me, my brave.com internship mentor Philipp, and my amazing collaborators Yi-Shyuan, Lan, and Stephanie! We’re on a mission to challenge the trillion-dollar attention economy — one toggle at a time!

Purpose Mode helps you remove cluttered layouts, notifications, infinite scroll, color saturation, and autoplay. It’s fully open-sourced on GitHub — give it a shot and reclaim your attention:
github.com/hankhplee/pu...

🎥 youtu.be/AWY8HQ_z_-c?...

So what is the bottom line here? Removing these subtle yet powerful design traps through tools like Purpose Mode drastically lowers perceived distraction. It puts you back in control — and makes your social media browsing more purposeful.

Overall, users’ subjective perceptions, such as sense of agency, overshadowed ACDPs as immediate predictors of users’ perceived distraction. Yet when we asked them to reflect on losing focus, they often blamed these dark patterns, suggesting habituation conceals their influence.

In the second week, they were introduced to Purpose Mode, a browser extension we built to allow users to “toggle off” ACDPs. Participants reported feeling distracted only 7% of the time and spent 21 fewer daily minutes browsing these websites.