An illustration of the top of the statue of The Thinker by Rodin. There is a nest in his head, with three chicks sticking out, and their parent bird flying above.

Tools for Thought

Better thinking through AI

Vision

Much AI research focuses on solving specific tasks for people – generating content or automating processes. While such systems may be powerful, there are risks that this approach may bring to human cognition. They may impact the way people think and therefore learn, build skills, and grow expertise for example.

The Tools for Thought (T4T) team aims to put human cognition at the heart of our systems. Our goal is to help researchers and systems builders to focus not just on automation, but on augmentation, imagining how AI might help people to think better.  To this end, we research the impact of AI on aspects of cognition and use this to design and build systems that support individual and collective intentionality, enhance skills in critical thinking, and develop cultures of creativity and experimentation.

We imagine that AI can enhance human cognition, so that:

  • as well as getting the job done, it helps us better understand and figure out the job.
  • as well as creating content, it helps us think more critically and with more insight throughout an entire workflow.
  • as well as seeking speed and efficiency, it helps us create outcomes that are more effective and of higher quality because they are the product of better answers from better questions.
  • as well as augmenting individual cognition and tasks, it augments collective cognition and workflows.
  • as well as automating known processes, it helps organisations predict and explore the unknown.

Research

Our research looks at how cognition can be supported and scaffolded by interacting with a tool for thought, as well as how it can be undermined by AI systems. It will be grounded in theories of cognition including:

  • metacognition
  • reflective and critical thinking
  • divergent and convergent thinking
  • learning, recall, and understanding
  • planning
  • individual and distributed thinking
  • decision-making

Outputs of T4T will include principles and guidelines for supporting cognition in any user experience, as well as systems and new technologies that stand as practical instantiations of what it means to support better thinking using AI. These may be technical in nature, focusing for example on methods for tuning models, model explainability and coordinating multi-agent systems.

This is a venn diagram that shows 10 types of thinking that the Tools for Thought team are interested in.
Some of the Types of Thought we are interested in.

Workstreams

The Tools for Thought team are exploring a broad range of themes, outlined in the table below.

WorkstreamDescription | Owner
Critical Thinking with AIHow might we design interfaces to promote critical thinking about task and AI output when working with generative AI | Advait Sarkar
Diversity of Thought with AICan AI agents support conversations with users that are rich, meaningful and well rounded, and that give humans agency over the discussion? | Pratik Ghosh
Explanations from AIHow might we enable better AI explanations for LLMs by providing user control over their characteristics and formation? | Ian Drosos
AI for Intentional MeetingsHow might we leverage generative AI to encourage self reflection and self awareness around collaboration, in order to make meetings more intentional? | Sean Rintel
Learning & Understanding with AIWhat impact do generative AI tools have on people’s understanding and memory of what they are doing – for example, when they write? Using this research, how can AI tools be designed so that they provably augment human cognition and help build core skills and capabilities? | Abigail Sellen / Leon Reicherts
Task decomposition with AI for data analysisHow might we create interfaces that support task decomposition in the context of data analysis, as well as provide affordances that allow for verification? | Jack Williams
Metacognition & AIHow do generative AI systems impose metacognitive demands on users, and how might they instead incorporate metacognitive support strategies? | Lev Tankelevitch
Workflows & Collaborative Intent with AIHow are complex collaborative intents formed? How are they formed and how do they evolve over time? | Britta Burlin
Creating with AIHow can we give people rich agency in the ways they participate in human-AI collaborative creativity? | Gonzalo Ramos

People

The Tools for Thought team is interdisciplinary, mixing experts in social science, computer science, engineering, and design. Our workstreams reflect this mix, combining depth in user research, cutting-edge technology, and new user experiences.

Portrait of Abigail Sellen

Abigail Sellen

Distinguished Scientist and Lab Director

Portrait of Advait Sarkar

Advait Sarkar

Senior Researcher

Portrait of Britta Burlin

Britta Burlin

Principal Design Manager

Portrait of Gonzalo Ramos

Gonzalo Ramos

Principal Researcher

Portrait of Ian Drosos

Ian Drosos

Researcher

Portrait of Jack Williams

Jack Williams

Senior Researcher

Portrait of Leon Reicherts

Leon Reicherts

Researcher

Portrait of Lev Tankelevitch

Lev Tankelevitch

Senior Researcher

Portrait of Martin Grayson

Martin Grayson

Principal Research Software Development Engineer

Portrait of Payod Panda

Payod Panda

Design Engineering Researcher

Portrait of Pratik Ghosh

Pratik Ghosh

Senior Research Designer

Portrait of Richard Banks

Richard Banks

Principal Design Manager

Portrait of Sean Rintel

Sean Rintel

Senior Principal Research Manager