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Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#111

Post by MomsAVoxell »

barrenko wrote: post #43
llm_trw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the fath…

Socrates is just the next monkey in line. As human monkeys, we have already traded (short-term) memory for abstract thinking and who knows what else. I guess that is the curse of evolution/specialization.

No doubt, this curse (which is also missing generalization, i.e. evolution/generalization/specialization) is all for the sake of self-awareness, or at least, awareness, of some particular thing.

As long as humans remain aware that they are engaging with an AI/ML, we might still have a chance. Computers definitely need to be identifiable as such.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#112

Post by ohphysics »

klodolph wrote: post #91
roydivision wrote: post #45

This stands to reason. If you need the answer to a question, and you can either get it directly, or spend time researching the answer, you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former. You may be disciplined enough to do more research if the answer is directly presented to you, but most people will not do that, and most companies are not interested in that, they want quick 'efficient', 'compet…

> They aren't considering the long term downside to this. This echoes sentiments from the 2010s centered around hiring. Companies generally don’t want to hire junior engineers and train them—this is an investment with risks of no return for the company doing the training. Basically, you take your senior engineers away from projects so they can train the juniors, and then the juniors now have the skills and credential…

[dead]

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#113

Post by sarchertech »

doitLP wrote: post #105
delusional wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No indication yet that use of AI is harming business outcome What a sad sentence to read in a discussion about cognitive lazyness. I think people should think, not because it improves business outcomes, but because it's a beautiful activity.

A well made buggy whip was probably beautiful too. But if economic forces incentivize something else, the skill goes away

Woe be to us all if the skill of thinking goes away.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#114

Post by mlyle »

agumonkey wrote: post #107
engineer_22 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have accounts from the ancient Greeks of the old-school's attitude towards writing. In the deep past, they maintained an oral tradition, and scholars were expected to memorize everything. They saw writing/reading as a crutch that was ruining the youth's memory. We stand now at the edge of a new epoch, reading now being replaced by AI retrieval. There is concern that AI is a crutch, the youth will be weakened. My o…

Am I the only one to expect a S curve regarding progress and not an eternal exponential ? People moving away from prideful principle to leverage new tech in the past doesn't guarantee that the same idea in the current context will pan out. But as you say.. we'll see.

Even if progress stops:

1. Current reasoning models can do a -lot- more than skeptics give them credit for. Typical human performance even among people who do something for employment is not always that high.

2. In areas where AI has mediocre performance, it may not appear that way to a novice. It often looks more like expert level performance, which robs novices of the desire to practice associated skills.

Lest you think I contradict myself: I can get good output for many tasks from GPT4 because I know what to ask for and I know what good output looks like. But someone who thinks the first, poorly prompted dreck is great will never develop the critical skills to do this.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#115

Post by skydhash »

ziddoap wrote: post #95
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, I believe in the value of "learning to learn", developing media literacy, and all of the other positives gained when you research and form conclusions on things independently. That is not going away. Learning better prompts, learning when to ignore AI, learning how to take information and turn it into something practical . These new skills will replace the old. How many of us can still... - Saddl…

> How many of us can still... Yes, this is what I meant by the calculator part of my comment. You've got some other good examples. > learning when to ignore AI, learning how to take information and turn it into something practical. This is what I meant by using LLMs as a tool rather than an end.

How many of us still have to do these things? You either eed to do them or you don’t. If you do, you will learn how or find someone that do.

We still need to calculate numbers and I can say it’s silly if I find someone need to get a calculator to do 5x20. Same if you’re taking hours and multiple sheets of paper for something that will take you a few minutes with a calculator. There’s a question of scale and basic understanding that divides the two.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#116

Post by SoftTalker »

klodolph wrote: post #91
roydivision wrote: post #45

This stands to reason. If you need the answer to a question, and you can either get it directly, or spend time researching the answer, you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former. You may be disciplined enough to do more research if the answer is directly presented to you, but most people will not do that, and most companies are not interested in that, they want quick 'efficient', 'compet…

> They aren't considering the long term downside to this. This echoes sentiments from the 2010s centered around hiring. Companies generally don’t want to hire junior engineers and train them—this is an investment with risks of no return for the company doing the training. Basically, you take your senior engineers away from projects so they can train the juniors, and then the juniors now have the skills and credential…

Engineers partly did this to themselves. The career advice during that time period was to change jobs every few years, demanding higher and higher salaries. So now, employers don't want to pay to train entry-level people, as they know they are likely going to leave, and at the salaries demanded they don't want to hire junior folks.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#117

Post by mlyle »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #87
ziddoap wrote: post #67

I'm certainly of two minds on this. On one hand, this reminds me of how all of the kids were going to be completely helpless in the real world because "no one carries a calculator in their pocket". Then calculators became something ~everyone has in their pocket (and the kids ended up just fine). On the other hand, I believe in the value of "learning to learn", developing media literacy, and all of the other positives…

tl;dr: I agree. We don't teach slide rules and log tables in school anymore. Calculators and computers have created a huge metacognitive laziness for me, and I teach calculus and have a PhD in statistics. I barely remember the unit circle except for multiples of pi/4 radians. I can do it in multiples of pi/6 but I'm slower. But guess what? I don't think I'm a worse mathematician because I don't remember these things…

I am not sure calculators have hurt us much on the high end of mathematical ability.

But man I cringe when I see 18 year old students reach for a calculator to multiply something by .1.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#118

Post by amrocha »

diggan wrote: post #98
amrocha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you’re using a map you’re still navigating, even if you’re just following directions. The act of navigating teaches you spatial awareness regardless of how you got there. AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. You’re actively getting stupider every time you take an LLMs answer for granted, and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted.

> AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. LLMs (try to) give you what you're asking for. If you ask for directions, you'll get something that resembles that, if you ask it to 100% navigate, that's what you get. > and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted. Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people…

Page 18 first paragraph, it talks about how ChatGPT users engaged less with the editing process compared to other methods. Sorry, copy and paste isn’t working for some reason.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#119

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

diggan wrote: post #98
amrocha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you’re using a map you’re still navigating, even if you’re just following directions. The act of navigating teaches you spatial awareness regardless of how you got there. AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. You’re actively getting stupider every time you take an LLMs answer for granted, and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted.

> AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you. LLMs (try to) give you what you're asking for. If you ask for directions, you'll get something that resembles that, if you ask it to 100% navigate, that's what you get. > and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted. Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people…

> Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people who used ChatGPT for the studying did better than the ones that didn't, with no different in knowledge retention.

This is what I observed as well. For the "metacognitive laziness" bit they had to point to other studies.

Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

#120

Post by ziddoap »

skydhash wrote: post #115
ziddoap wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many of us can still... Yes, this is what I meant by the calculator part of my comment. You've got some other good examples. > learning when to ignore AI, learning how to take information and turn it into something practical. This is what I meant by using LLMs as a tool rather than an end.

How many of us still have to do these things? You either eed to do them or you don’t. If you do, you will learn how or find someone that do. We still need to calculate numbers and I can say it’s silly if I find someone need to get a calculator to do 5x20. Same if you’re taking hours and multiple sheets of paper for something that will take you a few minutes with a calculator. There’s a question of scale and basic und…

>How many of us still have to do these things?

Yep, we agree. That's the whole point of what I said in the first half of my original comment.

At one time, they were common skills. Things changed, they aren't common, they aren't really needed (for most people), and everyone is doing just fine without them. We've freed up time and mental capacity for other (hopefully more beneficial) tasks.

(I'm confused why this reply and the other above it are are just restating the first part of my original comment, but framing it like it's not a restatement).

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