Study reveals how the risk of using AI tools for our cognitive skills: “it can inhibit critical engagement with work”
Generative artificial intelligence tools can enhance people’s efficiency but that can come with a cost, reduced effort in critical thinking a study finds.
The adverse effects of outsourcing the use of our mental skills to some tool have long be derided throughout history. From Socrates skepticism of writing to calculators being allowed into math classes.
Online IT tools are no different and some of those concerns have not been unfounded. Since the advent of Google for example, people have developed digital amnesia known as the Google effect, whereby they tend to forget information that they believe can be easily found online using search engines.
Now with the growing popularity of generative artificial intelligence chatbots, researchers are digging into how they are affecting our brains. A study carried out by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University looked at over 300 knowledge workers from a range of sectors and found that the technology is harming critical thinking skills.
The more we trust the machines the less effort made at critical thinking
The researchers asked the respondents to their survey to share examples of how they use generative AI tools in their work and whether they used critical thinking when utilizing them. Of those examples, respondents self-reported that just over 40% of the time they didn’t feel that critical thinking was necessary.
The respondents said that they “engage in critical thinking primarily to ensure the quality of their work,” for example “by verifying outputs against external sources.” However, they “perceived critical thinking activities, overall, to require less effort when using a GenAI tool compared to when not using one,” stated the study.
The researchers are concerned that despite generative AI’s ability to improve worker efficiency, on the downside “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,” the authors noted. They say this is because, “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.”
They highlighted that their study “suggests that GenAI tools need to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers,” in order to help knowledge workers face the challenges of incorporating the new technology into their workflows.
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