Last week I was on a call where every presenter’s slides smacked of AI, complete with grammar and punctuation ticks, bog standard fonts and designs. One presenter even admitted using it. AI is of course tremendous at taking on routine work that once took hours and producing ready-to-use output in minutes. But these presenters had clearly left it at that, and the result was as dull as dishwater.
I sorely missed the creativity and unique perspective that come when someone takes the time to research and develop their own ideas. I felt the absence of enlivenment that diversity of thought, choice of interesting words, unique phrasing and slide design produces. It was boring. The presenters had taken lazy shortcuts, and the audience was left flat, unresponsive and clearly feeling short-changed. AI may be speeding up output, but it is also creating sameness.
As a learning facilitator and psychologist, this matters even more when the goal is helping people develop and grow. We get the best outcomes when we acknowledge that not everyone is the same. We all need varied and engaging ways of learning and AI – useful as it is – cannot “read the room”.
I wonder whether our reliance on AI will wear off and whether we’ll eventually crave outputs that are more human, thoughtful, creative, considered and unique. Or perhaps we will become further enslaved to the master of productivity and, as a result, hypnotised by uniformity.
The challenge with sameness
Tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz has written about AI’s tendency to produce an “average of averages”, giving its output a built-in uniformity. Deliberate prompting can help overcome this, but even then, the results often remain familiar and predictable.
Nothing new comes from a process built on sameness. Research is clear that diverse thinking drives innovation, performance, problem-solving, learning and growth. We see this in marketing and advertising. Many brands in the sports betting industry lean heavily on AI, producing content that is initially exciting but quickly becomes generic. In comparison, brands that continue investing in distinctive creative campaigns – Checkers Sixty60 is a case in point – capture our attention and often our hearts. Simply put, our brains respond to fresh, original content.
Leaders in every environment – from classrooms to boardrooms and even NASA – should also remember that encouraging diverse thinking guards against groupthink. This dangerous phenomenon causes people to conform to the point where groups make illogical, even life-threatening decisions. This was the type of thinking that contributed to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. NASA staff ignored specific safety warnings because of schedule pressure, and the consequences were catastrophic.
AI appeals to the superhighways of our brain
Part of what makes it so hard to slow down and grapple with a task is that AI delights the fast, intuitive pathways in our brains. It also gives us a dopamine hit, as completing a task in minutes that would previously have taken hours, is deeply satisfying.
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow provides a useful lens on this. Fast, intuitive thinking helps us handle routine tasks. Slow, deliberate thinking gives us sound judgement and strategic decision-making. Letting AI kickstart the process can be very helpful. But if we rely solely on AI without engaging slow, deliberate thinking, we lose depth.
Depth is essential to human learning and growth. We must wrestle with ideas to learn. Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to over-reliance on AI because the part of the brain responsible for executive function – including self-control, delaying gratification and resisting temptation – does not fully mature until the mid-twenties. Learning environments need to deliberately build in opportunities for slow thinking so that young people can develop the critical skills they need to navigate the world.
What can be done to challenge sameness?
Someone once described AI as their intern who handles routine groundwork. But even if you outsource the legwork to your robotic intern, you must still review the output carefully and ensure the work is not uniform. Accountability for its quality and depth remains yours. But an even better way to avoid sameness is not to begin with AI at all. Start by engaging your own slow thinking: brainstorm, mind-map, draft, and only then bring AI in to build on your ideas.
Second, be deliberate in your AI prompts. Specificity and high-quality input go a long way towards avoiding generic answers. Cross-referencing more than one AI model, using each to challenge your thinking, helps too.
Engaging with other humans is irreplaceable. The diversity of perspectives, the pushback on your ideas (unlike AI’s positivity bias), and the humility that comes from being around smart people all fuel innovation and creativity in ways AI cannot replicate.
Above all, nothing replaces slowing down and doing the hard work yourself: reading the source material, building the foundation and writing the first draft. Yes, it’s slower. But it gives you real depth of knowledge, sharpens your critical and creative thinking, and produces something that is genuinely, uniquely yours.
Then by all means, get AI to check your work. This will not only produce a unique and polished product, it will ensure your audience doesn’t nod off.
Taegan Devar is an industrial psychologist and the Founder and Managing Director of people and organisational development firm Fineline Consulting.
