Critical thinking has never been more critical

Ask AI for marketing help and what we get back feels polished, looks professional, and we nod along. We get recommendations on what to do, based on winning examples.

This has always been a challenge for marketers. We love case studies. I love case studies. But case studies are not proof of rules or marketing laws. They are written by winners, about winners. They leave out the late-night panics, the bad bets, the abandoned work. What we get is a tidy story.

AI makes this worse. Because everything looks plausible and appears credible. Until you dig a little.

But you got to dig. Critical thinking was a top behaviour I cared about when I wrote my first book. When I was leading The National Lottery marketing, we stuck up our behaviours on the walls in our office. Number 3 on this list was critical thinking: question assumptions, look for evidence, stay sceptical but not cynical. It mattered then because lazy thinking led to poor decisions.

Now that AI can produce endless confident nonsense, critical thinking has never been more critical. Critical thinking is about asking why something worked, not just accepting that it did. Spotting when you're looking at survivor bias dressed as strategy. And remembering that a pile of isolated marketing facts is trivia, not guidance.

But AI can also help in the pushback. Have it generate counter-arguments. Have it test your assumptions. But don't let it validate you. That's when we get lazy. The job isn't to collect answers. The job is to work out which answers don't stand up.

For me a few checks matter. Start by asking if it's even the right question. Try more than one model, let them clash. Look for the failures, not just the shiny winners. And always ask: what would change my mind? If the answer is nothing, then I'm defending, not thinking.

AI is brilliant at pattern recognition. It's terrible at pattern relevance. The edge isn't in the confidence of the answer. It's in having the judgment to call bullshit when everyone else is nodding along.

If you're going to use these tools, set them up to argue back. AI can absolutely amplify lazy thinking. Confident nonsense at scale. But it can also be the thing that sharpens us, if we set it up that way. Use it to test assumptions, generate counter-arguments, and find our gaps. It won't think for us. But it can force us to think.