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

71–80 of 308 posts

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

#71

Post by lr4444lr »

miltonlost wrote: post #53
lr4444lr wrote: post #8

The abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means. Personally speaking, I find being able to ask ChatGPT continually more nuanced questions about an initial answer the one clear benefit over a Google search, where I have diminishing marginal returns on my inquisitiveness for the time invested over subsequent searches. The more precisely…

>The abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means. Your comment seems like a good example of metacognitive laziness: not bothering to formulate your own definition from the examples in the abstract and the meaning of the words themselves. Slothful about the the process of thinking for yourself.

I reread the abstract 3 times. The results stated prior to that definition simply don't follow consistently with the component meaning of those two words as I understand them.

The writer has the responsibility to be clear.

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

#72

Post by robviren »

This technology is arguably as ubiquitous as a calculator. So long as I can understand that generative AI is a tool and not a solution is it bad to treat it like a bit of a calculator? Does this metacognitive laziness apply to those who depend on calculators?

I understand it is a bit apples to oranges, but I'm curious peoples take.

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

#74

Post by alickz »

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…

> 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.

Why not force everyone to start from first principles then?

I think learning is tied to curiosity and curiosity is not tied to difficulty of research

i.e. give a curious person a direct answer and they will go on to ask more questions, give an incurious person a direct answer and they won't go on to ask more questions

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and that is a _good_ thing, not bad

Forcing us to forgo the giants and claw ourselves up to their height may have benefits, but in my eyes it is way less effective as a form of knowledge

The compounding force of knowledge is awesome to behold, even if it can be scary

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

#75

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #56

A preprint is available on arxiv [0], see the top of page 18 for what metacognitive laziness is: "In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks." And they seem to define, implicitly, “metacognitive load” as the cognitive and metaco…

> In the context of human-AI interaction, we define metacognitive laziness as learners’ dependence on AI assistance, offloading metacognitive load, and less effectively associating responsible metacognitive processes with learning tasks.

This sounds like parents complaining when we use Google Maps instead of a folding map. Am I worse at reading a regular map? Possibly. Am I better off overall? Yes.

Describing it as "laziness" is reductive. "Dependence on [_____] assistance" is the point of all technology.

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

#76

Post by charlie0 »

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.

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

#77

Post by bloopernova »

squigz wrote: post #22
jcims wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my take as well. There was a story a couple days ago about a neural network built on a single photonic chip. I fed the paper to ChatGPT and was able to use it to develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of what the chip actually delivered, how it operated, the fundamental operating principles of core components and how it could be integrated into a system. The fact that I now have a tire…

> (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) This is a pretty big caveat to the goal of > develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding Which is still my biggest issue with LLMs. The little I use of them, the answers are still confidently wrong a lot of the time. Has this changed?

I've found that whatever powers Kagi.com's answer seems to be pretty accurate. It cites articles and other sources.

Trying a share link, hope it works:

https://kagi.com/search?q=what+factors+affect+the+freezing+p...

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

#78

Post by SecretDreams »

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…

> No way to know how it turns out.

But one can speculate.

> No indication yet that use of AI is harming business outcomes.

Length scales to measure harm when it comes to policy/technology will typically require more time than we've had since LLMs really became prominent.

> The meta argument "AGI will cause massive social change" is probably true.

Agreed.

Basically, in the absence of knowing how something will play out, it is prudent to talk through the expected outcomes and their likelihoods of happening. From there, we can start to build out a risk-adjusted return model to the societal impacts of LLM/AI integration if it continues down the current trajectory.

IMO, I don't see the ROI for society of widespread LLM adoption unless we see serious policy shifts on how they are used and how young people are taught to learn. To the downside, we really run the risk of the next generation having fundamental learning deficiencies/gaps relative to their prior gen. A close anecdote might be how 80s/90s kids are better with troubleshooting technology than the generations that came both before and after them.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

empathy_m wrote: post #38

Cell phones and laptops in general have changed a couple of things for me, as someone who grew up without them: - I realized about 20y-25y ago that I could run a Web search and find out nearly any fact, probably one-shot but maybe with 2-3 searches' worth of research - About 10-15y ago I began to have a connected device in my pocket that could do this on request at any time - About 5y ago I explicitly *stopped* doing…

> There was this "pub trivia" thing that used to happen in the 80s and 90s where you would see a spirited discussion between people arguing about a small fact which neither of them immediately had at hand. We don't get that much anymore because it's so easy to answer the question -- we've just totally lost it.

A good example, but imagine the days of our ancestors:

Remember that game we used to play, where we'd find out who could see birds from the farthest distance? Yeah, glasses ruined that.

Post reply on HN