The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort & Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
35 points by seabre
35 points by seabre
Because I’ve seen misinterpretations of this study elsewhere, I think it’s worth mentioning that this is about critical thinking during the task for which they used generative AI, not an overall reduction in critical thinking even for other tasks (because the study wasn’t set up to measure that, not because they found no effect).
5.1.1
1) a higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking even though it is perceived as less effort to do so, and 2) a higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking even though it is perceived as more effort to do so.
Makes sense to me—Being self-confident goes hand in hand with holding what you’re told up to the standard of what you know. The more you know about a domain, the more confident you are there, and the easier or more automatic it is to scrutinize something else from that basis.
I would guess we also think less critically about what’s told to us by people, to the degree that we’re more confident in them than we are in ourselves, like if we see them as more of an expert. And in a chatbot context where AI is presented as a person, we could expect the same behavior.
Is it a leap to say the most responsible and effective users of AI tools would be not just those with experience, but experienced skeptics?
It’s good that there is a formal study that confirms it but why am I not surprised by the conclusion?