Online information literacy expert Mike Caulfield gave a Simmons Center for Information Literacy (SCIL) keynote presentation, “Critical Oversight: How AI Enhances Thinking, How It Hinders It, and How Education Can Respond” on November 12, 2025. Caulfield is the co-author of Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (University of Chicago Press, 2023).
Mike Caulfield is an expert in information literacy. Or, as he may put it, not getting duped by information we read online. With co-author Sam Wineburg, Caulfield wrote the “definitive guide” to discerning fact from fiction: Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Caulfield created the SIFT methodology to combat misinformation:
- Stop
- Investigate the source
- Find better coverage
- Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original content
Addressing the in-person and online crowd at his keynote at Simmons University, he shared the question that he has heard repeatedly over the past few years: What about AI?
“People weren’t asking for a replacement for SIFT; they were asking for something that addresses AI, specifically.” That is, a set of simple habits for students to follow that would dramatically increase their effectiveness in using AI as a way of making sense of the world around them.
“[SIFT is] a brief technique that you can hang a lot of other actions on,” he said, and what people were looking for was something that worked like “SIFT for AI.”
To test his approach, Caulfield described finding five to seven interesting claims a day, using AI to verify them, and then checking and sharing the results.
“We’re so early in [the days of] AI,” he noted. “Educators have to start by figuring out their own use of AI. That’s how I started.”
Regarding education, the issue that students don’t retain information that AI automates for them (or Google, for that matter) is already well established. He noted that while it can be used for “cognitive offloading” for small tasks in order to reduce the mental effort required, the risk is that students could outsource vital parts of their education. In addition, sycophancy is an issue: generative AI will often tell you what you want to hear.
Instead of focusing on the drawbacks, Caulfield tried a more positive approach. “What I wanted to know was, what does effective use of these tools look like?”
AI Demonstration in Real Time
Caulfield engaged the audience, both online and in person, encouraging them to look up a study using “AI mode” in Google.
“The key is to click until you find the link to the original study [that the article references].” The next step was to ask AI mode to create a table of information, then share with others what their search revealed.
“AI is generative, so each search will be different,” he noted. The last step was to search the study to find out who funded it, and determine any links to the industry itself.
“We are in a fraught time for critical thinking,” said Caulfield. “[However], we are in a golden age for critical thinkers.”
For Caulfield, AI is “like Microsoft Excel for critical thinking. It’s not going to make you a critical thinker any more than Excel can make you an engineer,” he said. He sees AI as a tool that can be applied to any field.” It allows you to quickly map out a discourse space and then poke at it, who said it, whether you can trust it, whether the summary was accurate or facile. It can help someone who is thoughtful and who approaches this with awareness of its limitations.”
A Methodology for AI Literacy
Like SIFT before it, Caulfield suggests AI literacy needs to engage students in “moves.” For AI, Caulfield suggests three moves: “Get it in, track it down, follow up.”
As generative AI blends information pulled from various sources, it’s often impossible to identify what is in the result of your prompt. He calls this the “information smoothie,” which is easy to drink, but we don’t know where any of the ingredients originated.
“A traditional [internet] search needs to use a few good keywords,” said Caulfield. “For AI mode, more words are useful. Capture the claim, and the context of the claim.”
And don’t take the results at face value. “Zoom into one piece of the response and check that it has an original source.”
That response depends on how you phrase the input; as such, the more a student practices crafting prompts, the better they will be at finding accurate information. “You need to include the claim, then send a follow-up prompt requesting text to debunk the claim.” He suggested including “what is the evidence for and against the claim I posted?”
The key is to craft neutral prompts that are evidence-focused. Leaning into your bias and asking AI, “please show me this,” will slant towards one particular side. Also, for prompts where information is evolving, he suggests including a prompt to “review the latest information,” as more recent developments may have been reported that will not be included in the original claim.
“Students should keep a “follow-ups” file,” he said, sharing his own suggestions for how to ask AI mode for evidence.
He noted that any AI platform has its limitations, particularly around sources and sourcing. “Claude, for example, is very literate. It pulls from a lot of books,” and a lot of answers are informed by those sources. However, he said, all of that text goes into the “information smoothie,” and the user may not be able to track down a link to the original source material.
Caulfield initially created extended prompts around the features and capabilities of paid versions of Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. However, he soon realized that most people were unlikely to pay for services even if the capabilities were better, and that most people weren’t going to start a chat session by copying and pasting in his 3,500 word prompt. Since then, Caulfield has opted to return to his SIFT roots, developing simple, easy-to-remember techniques people can use in the moment, with free tools such as Google’s AI Mode, which is integrated into Google Search and doesn’t require a login.
“The paid versions [of these products] are better, but ubiquity of access eats perfection for breakfast in technology,” he said.