Researchers increasingly suspect that outsourcing intellectual tasks to AI is leading to a variety of cognitive deficits. A new study notes that the use of bots can erode users’ confidence in their own abilities, resulting in less confidence in their own independent reasoning.
The new peer-reviewed study, published in magazine Technology, Mind and Behavior And flagged by Timefound that people who showed heavy reliance on AI were more likely to accept that chatbots were “thinking” for them – and appeared to have less confidence in their own thoughts.
By the same token, participants who took control over their AI’s output by editing, interrogating, or scraping it showed greater confidence and a sense of ownership over the final output, even if the tools used were the same.
As study author Sarah Baldev – a PhD candidate in AI and neuroscience at Middlesex University – explained TimeThe ultimate cognitive effect “depends on your negotiation style.”
“When we look at brain activity depending on how people choose to use the device, we can see an increase or decrease,” Baldev said. “It really has nothing to do with the equipment.”
This finding is consistent with the “boiling frog study” we covered earlier this week. The yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper by researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon claims to have found the first causal evidence that AI can rapidly degrade users’ intellectual abilities, especially when we use the technology for “reasoning-intensive” work.
during that studyParticipants in the experimental group were given AI access to complete a series of equations. The researchers then interrupted their work, forcing them to continue without it. People who were abandoned by their AI chatbots saw a sharp decline in their reasoning abilities, as well as a sharp decline in their willingness to try and complete math tasks.
Both studies focus on the same basic mechanisms: yesWhen you use AI is a key factor in determining whether it harms your cognitive ability. Basically, they argue that putting all your work on a machine reduces your ability to reason independently, while using AI as a supplement can help preserve it.
Whether you’re measuring confidence or raw reasoning, both pieces of research seem to pose an important question: Are you using the AI to help you think, or is the AI doing the thinking for you?
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