Is AI the End of Cognitive Effort?

We’ve entered a paradoxical era of work. While AI is saving employees an average of 10 hours a week, a "productivity bubble" has emerged. Instead of using that found time for innovation, many are spending nearly half of it reworking and contextualizing AI’s output. Are we becoming faster at the expense of our own critical thinking?

In this episode, Aashna Kircher, SVP of HR Products at Workday, and Jacqueline Carter, Managing Partner at Potential Project, dive into the psychological and structural shifts required to thrive in the age of AI. They move beyond the technical hype to explore "automation bias," the biological pull of the "easy button," and why the most important skill of 2026 won’t be prompt engineering—it will be discernment.