Understanding, Protecting, and Augmenting Human Cognition with Generative AI: A Synthesis of the CHI 2025 Tools for Thought Workshop
It addresses the need for tools and theories to understand and enhance human cognition in the face of generative AI's risks and opportunities, but is incremental as it builds on existing workshop discussions.
The paper synthesizes discussions from a CHI 2025 workshop on how generative AI impacts human cognition, identifying research and design opportunities to protect and augment thought processes like metacognition and creativity.
Generative AI (GenAI) radically expands the scope and capability of automation for work, education, and everyday tasks, a transformation posing both risks and opportunities for human cognition. How will human cognition change, and what opportunities are there for GenAI to augment it? Which theories, metrics, and other tools are needed to address these questions? The CHI 2025 workshop on Tools for Thought aimed to bridge an emerging science of how the use of GenAI affects human thought, from metacognition to critical thinking, memory, and creativity, with an emerging design practice for building GenAI tools that both protect and augment human thought. Fifty-six researchers, designers, and thinkers from across disciplines as well as industry and academia, along with 34 papers and portfolios, seeded a day of discussion, ideation, and community-building. We synthesize this material here to begin mapping the space of research and design opportunities and to catalyze a multidisciplinary community around this pressing area of research.