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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

#261

Post by yapyap »

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…

and honestly, reading and writing probably did make the youth’s memory a few generations down weaker.

If you are not expected to remember everything like the ancient Greek were, you are not training your memory as much and it will be worse than if you did.

Now do I think it’s fair to say AI is to what reading/writing as reading/writing was to memorizing? No, not at all. AI is nothing near as revolutionary and we are not even close to AGI.

I don’t think AGI will be made in our lifetime, what we’ve seen now is nowhere near AGI, it’s parlor tricks to get investors drooling and spending money.

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

#262

Post by henriquemaia »

sanderjd wrote: post #154
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…

That's a subtle, yet important point. Putting themselves out there is not easy for some. LLMs can take that pressure away.

The 'but' in that lies with how much freedom is given to the LLM. If constrained, its refusal to answer may become a somewhat triggering possibility.

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

#263

Post by wisty »

This is the old "siiiiiir why do we need to do this if we have calculators"? It matters - https://www.edweek.org/education/little-numbers-add-up-to-bi... Students who know the facts will be better at math.

Even if the computer is doing all the thinking, it's still a tool. Do you know what to ask it? Can you spot a mistake when it messes up (or you messed up the input)? Can you simplify the problem and figure out what the important parts of the problem are? Do you even know to do any of that?

Sure, thinking machines will sometimes be autonomous and not need you to touch them. But when that's the case, your job won't be to just nod along to everything the computer says, you won't have a job anymore and you will need to find a new job (probably one where you need to prompt and interpret what the AI is doing).

And yes, there will be jobs where you just act as an actuator for the thinking machine. Ask an Amazon warehouse worker how great a job that is :/

Everything is the same as with calculators.

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

#264

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

I think you put your finger on it with the mention of discipline. I find AI tools quite useful for giving me a quick outline of things I want to play with or get up to speed on fast, but not necessarily get too invested in. But if you fin yourself so excited by a particular result that it sets your imagination whirling, it might be time to switch out of generative mode and use the AI as a tutor to deepen your actual understanding, ideally in combination with books or other static learning resources.

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

#265

Post by pdfernhout »

Nevermark wrote: post #209
agumonkey wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

human existence doesn't really scale exponentially, that's my take on this

Our best bets are the following I think: First, and above all, Ethics. Ethics of humans, matters more than anything. We need to straighten out the ethics of the technology industry. That sounds formidable, but business models based on extraction, or externalizing damage, are creating a species of "corporate life forms" and ethically challenged oligarchs that are already driving the first wave of damage coming out of…

On the ethics point as a "best bet", consider also the importance of a sense of humor that recognizes irony. As I wrote in 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines [and competitive companies] and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military [and economic] uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."

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

#266

Post by xenadu02 »

I wonder how will LLMs learn anything new when no one does original research and just asks the LLM? Will LLMs just feed back on each other, effectively hallucinating false "learning"?

Maybe we'll end up as a society of a few elites who still know how to research, think, and/or write with LLMs digesting that and regurgitating it for the masses.

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

#268

Post by sanderjd »

henriquemaia wrote: post #262
sanderjd wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a subtle, yet important point. Putting themselves out there is not easy for some. LLMs can take that pressure away. The 'but' in that lies with how much freedom is given to the LLM. If constrained, its refusal to answer may become a somewhat triggering possibility.

I think this "refusal to answer" thing is so overblown. I have been using this technology every day for over two years now and have not one single time run into this.

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

#269

Post by meindnoch »

ge96 wrote: post #172
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…

random thought if in the future children are born with a brain computer and inherit their family's data that would be interesting

Whoah! That would be crazy!

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

#270

Post by Theodores »

jancsika wrote: post #151
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…

> 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…

Coming from an era when calculators were banned, I am shocked that education is all-in with ChatGPT.

I used to use Stack Overflow for everything a few years ago, now I know that very few of those top-rated answers are any good, so I have to refer to the codebase to work things out properly. It took a while for me to work that out.

It is the same with vector images, I always have to make my own.

ChatGPT is in this same world of shoddiness, probably because it was fed on Stack Overflow derived works.

There are upsides to this, if a generation have their heads confused with ChatGPT, then us old-timers with cognitive abilities get to keep our jobs since there are no young people learning how to do things properly.

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