Think with AI, not for AI: guiding thought unlocks creativity

AI can boost human creativity when used as a process partner rather than the creator. Studies show bots and humans perform similarly on raw divergent-thinking tasks, but when AI provides explicit thinking steps (for example, generating word categories and selecting from them), people maintain greater idea diversity and resist thought-anchoring. The takeaway is to ask AI how to think, not what to think, leveraging human–machine collaboration to spur innovation in research and problem-solving.