Oby Oputa: how intentional use of AI can build critical thinking

So it's had a bit of a journey, my AI lenses.

So this is something that came out of my...

So when I answered my dissertation questions, one of the things that came out of my dissertation in terms of one of the conditions or ways that AI could be integrated into careers practice was this idea of kinda AI profiles which now became AI lenses.

The idea is that AI lenses, they help us understand how we naturally tend to engage with AI and apply AI in our practice.

And that came about from my experience of using AI and when I was starting to integrate AI into my practice.

And actually before I go into that, I'm gonna give you the other components of what AI lenses mean.

So they are, understand how we naturally tend to engage with AI and apply AI in our practice, but they also help us surface the needs and underlying purpose of AI, purpose AI is helping us trying to meet.

Mm-hmm.

So what are the needs, what are the questions that, that we're trying to get AI to help us address? And then they also help us support with more intentional and flexible use of AI.

You hear me talk a lot about intentional.

This is the idea of being present and being very intentional about how you want to use AI in your work and where, and being a conscious user.

I think at the moment a lot of us are quite, AI just something that we, we do half asleep and, but the idea is that I, we have to think more about how we use AI intentionally, be more present, be more aware of it, and more purposefully in our work.

So with that, so the idea is that the lenses help us to then understand this need, and for me it was the need that AI helped me meet was the fact that in my role, I remember stepping into my role three years ago as a, as social director for University of London Career Service, and, and I felt a lot of imposter syndromes.

[laughs] And, and there were gaps in my knowledge I felt, and in my practice that I didn't know.

That I felt that AI started to help me grow.

And one of the lenses that I would talk about was this lens of a learning partner.

So AI was this learning collaborative friend for me that met the need of where I felt that I needed to learn a lot about things that I did not understand.

Or even if I knew them, but actually help, been able to almost have someone that I can speak to and go over, um, the things that I was, I'm not sure about, and ask the questions that I wasn't sure about.

So it became my critical collaborative friend.

So I developed, there are six lenses which I feel help us to think about that meets our different needs, that might surface the different needs that we, how we want to use AI, or speak to us about the way that we might naturally tend to want to engage with AI when we use AI in our work.

So those six lenses are, so the first one is ideas creator.

This is the idea that AI user lends AI to generate possibilities and explore new perspective.

The second is content collaborator, where AI meets the need of helping to clarify, refine, and strengthen your work.

And the other one where I feel like most naturally aligns with me is AI as a learning partner, where AI helps to build knowledge and develop your, build understanding and develop your knowledge.

The other one is a decision navigator.