Abstract:

Introduction:
The development of appropriate thinking skills is especially important in the AI age, where AI tools are poised to augment human intelligence in both life and workspaces. If education is essentially an intellectual formation, identifying thinking skills that can be exercised in collaboration with AI tools and those that can be exercised only in complementarity with human intelligence assumes enormous importance in the AI age. This paper attempts to differentiate between thinking skills that can be developed in collaboration with AI tools and those that stand alone as core human competencies, which can only be complemented or augmented by AI. This key insight can be helpful in the systematic design of education in the AI age.

Objective:
This paper aims to differentiate various thinking skills based on their exercise in collaboration with AI tools, thus identifying thinking skills that require special attention in designing modern-day education in the AI age. Accordingly, thinking skills that can be autonomously handled by AI tools shall be considered necessary but not sufficient for navigating the AI age. It also highlights key thinking skills that must be prioritized in the intellectual formation of students—those inaccessible to AI tools and unique to human thinking. Thus, the paper aims to contribute to defining education suitable for the requirements of students in the AI age.

Methodology:
The paper adopts a descriptive method, providing a systematic account of the development of students' thinking skills in the AI age. It develops a narrative that incorporates the influence of AI tools in the process while highlighting human core competencies.

Results:
The paper identifies four types of thinking skills:
1) Endopersonal thinking skills: These are associated with the retrieval of already accumulated knowledge and are described by the lower-order thinking skills (LOTs) of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT).
2) Exopersonal thinking skills: These help students create new ideas based on analytical, critical, and creative thinking skills, the so-called higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) of RBT.
3) Interpersonal thinking skills: These are required for higher-order creative thinking with others, mutually, figuratively, and imaginatively.
4) Transpersonal thinking skills: These are essential for maintaining the highest order of creativity, the ability to intuitively appropriate breakthrough ideas.
It was found that AI tools can collaborate in the development of these thinking skills in a reverse order. Endopersonal thinking skills can be almost fully delegated to AI tools, whereas exopersonal thinking skills can be better exercised in close collaboration with AI tools. Interpersonal and transpersonal thinking skills belong to the core competencies of human thinking and require more attention in the intellectual formation of students in the AI age.

Conclusion:
An AI-native education should give prominence to the development of thinking skills that lie beyond the scope of cognitive skills defined by RBT. In other words, the thinking skills visualized in RBT are necessary but not sufficient to fully define the intellectual formation of the AI-natives. Students of the AI age must nurture in themselves a polychromatic spectrum of thinking skills that equip them both to collaborate with and complement the cognitive skills that will be progressively appropriated by the AI tools.

Keywords:

Endopersonal thinking skills, Exopersonal thinking skills, Interpersonal thinking skills, Transpersonal thinking skills, Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, Analytical Thinking, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Mutual thinking, Figurative thinking, Imaginative thinking, Intuitive thinking.