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    Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills
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    Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills

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    1. nimicdoareu on

      >The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices.

      > We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so. Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks.

      > Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks.

      > Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship. Our insights reveal new design challenges and opportunities for developing GenAI tools for knowledge work.

    2. evonebo on

      This is just like any other skill, when you automate and making it easy people don’t know how to do the basics.

      Ask any 20 year-old today how to read a map, a majority of them can’t because we have Google maps.

    4. salacious_sonogram on

      The way things have been going I thought all critical thinking was already dead. Seems people just blindly follow whatever is familiar like zombies seeking dopamine instead of brains.

    5. Kirbyoto on

      People be like “critical thinking is dead, this headline said so, no I will not actually critically examine the study that the headline is reporting on”

    6. garylapointe on

      It doesn’t seem like you would need to study to determine that someone/something giving you the answers to every question would affect your critical thinking skills.

    7. benanderson89 on

      We’ve known this since the 1990s. I can’t remember the exact study off of the top of my head but fatigue and “brain-rot” was observed with the early rise of email circa 1995, as well as people’s ability to spell (in any language) dropping off the face of the earth once Google introduced search suggestions in 2002.

    8. idobi on

      I used to work in a SCIF as a developer and could remember much of the Java API. Leaving that environment and having access to Google and StackOverflow ruined that for me. I assume AI has the same affect. Use crutches sparingly.

    9. grekster on

      In my experience the people relying on AI didn’t have any critical thinking skills in the first place. The amount of times that I’ve seen people post a response from ChatGPT that is *obviously* wrong on social media is beyond a joke