Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 308 posts

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

#151

Post by jancsika »

engineer_22 wrote: post #68
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…

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…

> We stand now at the edge of a new epoch, reading now being replaced by AI retrieval.

Utilizing a lively oral trad. at the same time as written is superior to relying on either alone. And it's the same with our current AI tools. Using them as a substitute for developing oral/written skills is a major step back. Especially right now when those AI tools aren't very refined.

Nearly every college student I've talked to in the past year is using chatgpt as a substitute for oral/written work where possible. And worse, as a substitute for oral/written skills that they have still not developed.

Latency: maybe a year or two for the first batch of college grads who chatgpt'd their way through most of their classes, another four for med school/law school. It's going to be a slow-motion version of that video-game period in the 80s after pitfall when the market was flooded with cheap crap. Except that instead of unlicensed Atari cartridges, it's professionals.

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

#152

Post by bradarner »

Any time an empirical research project has to add QUOTES around a common term, it sets off the non-sense radar:

..."laziness"...

In the battle cry of the philosopher: DEFINE YOUR TERMS!!

What they really mean: new and different. Outside-the-box. "Oh no, how will we grade this?!?" a threat to our definition and control of knowledge.

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

#153

Post by hb-robo »

charlie0 wrote: post #76

I mean this is the same exact thing that happened when calculators where invented. The amount of people who can count in their heads drastically dropped because why waste your time? Ditto for when maps app came out. No more need to memorize a bunch of locations because you can just use maps to take you there.

It's funny, the calculators were incredibly politicized when I was growing up (TI84 generation, so kids were getting caught programming functions to solve exam questions) but GPS was just taken as a given.

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

#154

Post by sanderjd »

ankit219 wrote: post #55

There are two aspects to this from my pov. And I think it might be controversial. When i have a question about any topic, and I ask Chatgpt, i usually chat about more things, coming up with questions based on the answer, and mostly stupid questions. I feel like I am taking in the information, analyzing, and then diving deeper because I am curious. This is based on how I learn about stuff. I know i need to check a few…

I really think the ability to ask questions entirely free from all judgment is an under-emphasized aspect of the power of these tools. Yes, some people are intellectually secure enough to ask the "dumb" questions of other humans, but most people are not, especially to an audience of strangers. I don't think I ever once asked a question on Stack Overflow, because it was easy to see how the question I worried might be dumb might be treated by the community there. But I ask all sorts of dumb questions of these models, with nary a concern about being judged. I love that aspect of it.

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

#155

Post by bradarner »

engineer_22 wrote: post #68
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…

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…

Writing seems to have worked out pretty well.

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

#156

Post by sanderjd »

regentbowerbird wrote: post #84
ankit219 wrote: post #55

There are two aspects to this from my pov. And I think it might be controversial. When i have a question about any topic, and I ask Chatgpt, i usually chat about more things, coming up with questions based on the answer, and mostly stupid questions. I feel like I am taking in the information, analyzing, and then diving deeper because I am curious. This is based on how I learn about stuff. I know i need to check a few…

> compared this to researching on the internet, there are some good aspects, but more often than not, I end up reading an opinionated post by someone (no matter the topic, if you go deep enough, you will land on an opinionated factual telling). ChatGPT is in fact opinionated, it has numerous political positions ("biases") and holds some subjects taboo. The difference is that a single actor chooses the political opini…

Fine. But it would never occur to me to try to form political opinions using chatgpt.

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

#157

Post by Oarch »

bradarner wrote: post #155
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…

Writing seems to have worked out pretty well.

...so far!

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

#158

Post by marcosdumay »

agumonkey wrote: post #122
marcosdumay wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean an S curve on the progress of the AI? Most of the discussion on the thread is about LLMs as they are right now. There's only one odd answer that throws an "AGI" around as if those things could think. Anyway, IMO, it's all way overblown. People will learn to second-guess the LLMs as soon as they are hit by a couple of bad answers.

hmm yeah sorry, I meant the benefits of humans using current AI. by that I mean, leveraging writing was a benefit for humans to store data and think over longer term using a passive technique (stones, tablets, papyrus).. but an active tool might not have a positive effect on usage and brains. if you give me shoes, i might run further to find food, if you give me a car i mostly stop running and there might be no bette…

Yeah, I agree. Those things have a much smaller benefit over hypertext and search engines than hypertext and search engines had over libraries.

But I don't know if it fits an S-curve or if they are just bellow the trend.

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

#159

Post by SoftTalker »

Daishiman wrote: post #127
SoftTalker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is only because companies don't want to raise salaries as engineers' skill levels increase. If companies put junior employees in higher salary bands as their skill levels increase there wouldn't be a problem.

Yes that's why I said "partly."

When I started work (this was in the pre-consumer-internet era), job hopping was already starting to be a thing but there was defintely still a large "old school" view that there should be some loyalty between employer and employee. One of my first jobs was a place where they hired for potential. They hired smart, personable people and taught them how to program. They paid them fairly well, and gave annual raises and bonuses. I was there for about 8 years, my salary more than doubled in that time. Maybe I could have made more elsewhere, I didn't even really look because it was a good environment, nice people, low stress, a good mix of people since not everyone (actually only a few) were Comp. Sci. majors.

I don't know how much that still happens, because why would a company today invest in that only to have the employee leave after two years for a higher salary. "They should just pay them more" well yeah, but they did pay them in the sense of teaching them a valuable skill. And their competitors for employees started to include VC funded startups playing with free money that didn't really care what it cost to get bodies into the shop. Hard to compete with that when you actually have to earn the money that goes into the salary budget.

Would the old school approach work today? Would employees stay?

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

#160

Post by klodolph »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #141
Daishiman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only because companies don't want to raise salaries as engineers' skill levels increase. If companies put junior employees in higher salary bands as their skill levels increase there wouldn't be a problem.

Capitalism and fiduciary duty prevents employers from paying people their market value when they are content enough to stay. An employee who does not do the effort to re-peg their labor time to market rates for their skill level is implicitly consenting to a prior agreement (when they were hired).

Funny how fiduciary duty in these contexts is overwhelmingly short-sighted.
Post reply on HN