Why you should pay attention to what Sue Healy says

Sue Healy is a very smart person; I have nothing but respect for her entrepreneurship, leadership, and clarity of thought.

You don’t have consistent success over four decades in this industry without a deep understanding of the forces of internal and external change.

Last Thursday at Bullhorn Engage at Royal Randwick, Sue, in her role as managing director of Talent Quarter Group, shared the stage with another very smart industry leader, Matthew Dickason, the Hays APAC CEO in the session, Preparing for the next wave of growth in recruitment.

There was plenty of gold shared by both Sue and Matthew, but what especially made me stop and think was the conversation about the impact of AI.

During the discussion about the practical ways in which AI will be used by recruitment agency owners and recruiters, Sue posed the question, “Will we be dumbed down?”

Sue explained that her concern was that the power of AI will take over doing many things and the risk is we gradually lose our human capability to think through situations to not just understand what to do but how to apply the solution to maximise the human experience for our candidates and clients.

Although the discussion moved on, I was struck by the profound truth of what Sue had just said.

With Sue’s comments ringing in my ears, I looked for what other smart people were saying on the topic.

Dr. Colin Lewis, is a professor of AI, behavioral economics & data science and has a compelling Substack, The One Per Cent Rule. He is undoubtedly one of the sharpest and clearest minds on the topic of AI’s impact on human behaviour.

Last month, in his post We Need To Strengthen, Not Erode Thinking (the whole post is well worth the time to read), Dr Lewis wrote,

A recent, very important, study, The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking, (conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research) unearths a contradiction. While these tools promise to enhance efficiency, they simultaneously risk atrophying the very faculties that make knowledge work valuable: skepticism, discernment, and the creative friction of intellectual struggle. The study, conducted across a diverse pool of 319 professionals, including educators, software developers, marketers, and analysts, maps a startling, yet not surprising, phenomenon:

…the more confident users are in AI’s capabilities, the less they engage in critical analysis. The higher their faith in AI-generated responses, the lower their inclination to challenge, verify, and refine.

“Used improperly, technologies can and do result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.”

This raises urgent questions about a delicate trade-off, the efficiency gained from delegating our mental chores versus the maintenance, or even growth, of our critical thinking skills.

The risk, then, is not merely that AI influences how we think, it may subtly dictate whether we think at all.”

Dr. Lewis goes on to address the territory that Sue brought up concerning a recruiter’s ability to produce a personalised customer experience,

“An overlooked consequence of AI reliance is the phenomenon of “mechanized convergence.” The study notes that knowledge workers using GenAI produce less diverse solutions for the same problem compared to those who work unaided. This suggests an implicit narrowing of intellectual horizons, where AI, rather than serving as a multiplicity-generator, often leads users toward a homogenized, median response.”

The future is not necessarily bleak for human thought, as Dr. Lewis goes on to say,

“Despite its foreboding conclusions, the study offers a blueprint for a more constructive AI future. If AI tools are designed not as cognitive crutches but as cognitive provocateurs, they could enhance rather than erode critical thinking. This means embedding mechanisms that encourage users to justify, refine, and interrogate AI output, prompting reflection rather than mere acceptance. We must now adapt AI with intentional designs that safeguard and even bolster our capacity for thoughtful inspection. The authors suggest a path forward by:

“…developing GenAI tools that foster user awareness, encourage motivation, and enable the user’s ability to think critically.”

The study leaves us with an inescapable question: Are we outsourcing not just our work, but our thought?

“While GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving.”

When asked what competencies he believed were of greater importance to recruitment consultants now, Matthew Dickason nominated curiosity and resilience.

Here’s what Dr. Lewis had to say about the role of curiosity,

The challenge before us is to ensure that AI does not become a mechanism for passive deference but a tool for active deliberation. As knowledge workers increasingly place their trust in generative AI, we must remember that the most dangerous forms of cognitive decline do not announce themselves with fanfare. They arrive in the form of ease, convenience, and the slow fading of intellectual resistance. It is our curiosity, not our complacency that we need to nurture.”

As Lewis concludes,

“….the real test is not whether AI can think for us, it is whether we will still choose to think for ourselves.”

When the smartest people in our industry are talking about the things that they believe will significantly impact the future of our industry, it’s wise to be listening.

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