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Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

181–190 of 308 posts

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

#181

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…

*but most people will not do that*

LLMs will definitely be a technology that widens the knowledge gap at the same time that it improves access to knowledge. Just like the internet.

30 years ago people dreamed about how smart everyone would be with humanity's knowledge instantly accessible. We've had wikipedia for a while, but what's the take-up rate of this infinite amount of information? Most people prefer to scroll rage-bait videos on their phones (content that doesn't give them knowledge or even make them feel better, just that makes them angry)

Of course it's amazing to hear every once in a while the guy who maintains a vim plugin by coding on his phone in Pakistan.... or whatever other thing that is enabled by the internet by people who suddenly have access to this stuff. That's not an effect of all humans on average, it's an effect on a few people who finally have a chance to take advantage of these tools.

I heard in a YouTube interview a physicist saying that LLMs are helping physics research just because any physicist out there can now ask graduate-level questions about currently published papers, that is, have access to knowledge that would have been hard to come by before, sharing knowledge across sub-domains of physics by asking ChatGPT.

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

#182

I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of…

I recognize this problem, but I find in my own uses of ChatGPT it actually allows me to overcome my laziness rather than making it worse.

I'll have a problem that I want to work on but getting started is difficult. Asking ChatGPT is almost frictionless, the next thing I know I'm working on the project, 8 hours go by and I'm done. When I get stuck on some annoying library installation, ChatGPT solves if for me so I don't get frustrated. It allows me to enter and maintain flow states better than anything else.

ChatGPT is a really good way of avoiding procrastination.

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

#183

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…

SOCRATES: Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God? PHAEDRUS: No, indeed. Do you? SOCRATES: I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men? PHAEDRUS: Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you…

“The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.” Alberto Moravia, London Observer, 14 Oct. 1979

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

#184

I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of…

I think this is where my physical laziness benefits me. I’m often too lazy to spend the time to fully describe the problem to the LLMs and wrap it in a prompt that will produce something, in written text, so I think through it first. Usually I solve it myself or think of a better primary source.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe he implied by saying: > you're going to learn much more with the latter approach than the former that the downside is a lack of deep knowledge that would enable better solutions in the long term

Yes, the downside is that we aren't really learning anything, just solving problems supported by machines that tell us the solutions. Any schmuck can do that.

I think it is worse. Information will dry up (in a variety of ways) making it much harder to even learn the traditional way as we could in the past.

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

#186
Inevitably the advancement of knowledgeable information generation will have same mental effect as having a contact list on your phone. When I was a kid I knew at least 5 peoples phone numbers maybe more. Even now I can recall 2 of them. How many can you recall from your actual contact list?

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

#187
I don’t see how the “metacognitive laziness” (a term used by the abstract, but not defined) follows from what they describe in the abstract as the outcomes they observed. They specifically called out no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; doesn’t that imply that the ChatGPT users were no lazier after using ChatGPT than they were before?

I’m also a skeptic of students using and relying on ChatGPT, but I’m cautious about using this abstract to come to any conclusions without seeing the full paper especially given that they’re apparently using “metacognitive laziness” in a specific technical way we don’t know about if we haven’t read the paper.

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

#188

I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of…

LLMs have taught me something that I sort of already knew from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: the key to problem solving is asking the right question in the first place. It's not dangerous that answers can be retrieved quickly. Indeed, people had the same things to say about Google in the 90s or pocket calculators in the 70s. To me LLMs just speed up the process by which I would have manually searched the internet for in the first place. The only way to get good at critical thinking is to ask more questions.

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

#189
post #59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long time ago I had the idea that maybe Guinness started a "book of world records" precisely because it answers exactly the kind of question that will routinely pop up at the pub.

Yes. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story

Wow I had no idea the name literally came from Guinness beer. Brilliant!

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

#190
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just old enough to remember pub trivia before it was possible to look things up with a phone. I firmly maintain that phones ruined pub trivia.

I agree but I think we shouldn’t limit this answer to pub trivia. What other aspect of human society and civil discourse did we lose because we never argue or discuss any more?

It turns out the internet has created more things to argue about than it destroyed.
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