The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
GenAI can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving.
Analysing 936 real-world GenAI tool use examples our participants shared, we find that knowledge workers engage in critical thinking primarily to ensure the quality of their work, e.g. by verifying outputs against external sources. Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification; from problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execution to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows. To that end, our work suggests that GenAI tools need to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers.
You see, an alternative way to make your AI pass the Turing test is just to use it to make all humans more stupid.
Thanks, I hate it.
Americans: Hold my beer.
I wonder if there were articles like this when the pocket calculator came out.
If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
Plato against writing
Thanks for that, also absolutely love your name.
There are studies about how other tools reduced various capacities. Our memory capacity has decreased and how we use it has changed. People used to store a lot of information, now we only store a sort of index (we remember where to look it up, not the information itself). Our attention span has also greatly decreased with the shift to short form content (not a useful tool, but just another cognitive change).
Agriculture also shrunk our brains
It did! But we also ended up being more efficient per grey-matter mass.
FTA
This reduction in brain size however does not mean that modern humans are less intelligent. Human brains have evolved to work more efficiently and utilize less energy.
Do you think this is the reason why so much money is being poured into generative AI by tech bros and now the US government? Lessening the critical thinking skills of people who use it, which is a lot of people by now, so that they don't worry about what unethical things companies or the government does?
Something to think about, I suppose.
Honestly? I understand my code less when I use fancy auto complete
I don't use the fancy autocomplete. I ask the AI to generate a boilerplate with X framework/language. Then I'll ask it to stub in whatever major features I know I'll want, maybe ask it for a handful of libraries.
Initial setup is all busy work.
I’ve only used genAI once, to re-write my resume. (And I played with image generation to sort of see what it can do and be a muse for me because I’m aphantasic, but I was wiiiiiildly disappointed.)
It spit out something less good than what I fed into it, hallucinated a ton of skills and experience I don’t have, and it looked like AI slop when it was done. So a lose-lose.
Might be good for people who don’t know things or who can’t write for shit (so your average first year college student, IME) but.. honestly it’s garbage if you aren’t average or below already. So I’m not surprised it’s ruining people’s ability to function.
Ai is a tool for dumb people (sorry. not sorry.) to land good jobs that dumb people shouldn’t hold or be hiring for, and that’s about it.