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Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation

bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

81–90 of 308 posts

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

#81

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…

It is much more recent than the Greeks. McLuhan, for example, had some good points* about how writing/reading is different (and indeed in some ways worse?) than oral tradition, and how it influences even our social interactions and mindset. Film is different yet again (partially has to do with its linearity IIRC).

So it’s not like “kids these days”, no. To be honest, I don’t know how generative AI tools, which arguably take away most of the “create” and “learn” parts, are relevant to the question of differences between different mediums and how those mediums influence how we create and learn. (There are ML-based tools that can empower creativity, but they don’t tend to be advertised as “AI” because they are a mostly invisible part of some creative tool.)

What is potentially relevant is how interacting with a particular kind of generative ML tool (the chatbot) for the purposes of understanding the world can be bringing some parts of human oral tradition (though lacking communication with actual humans, of course) and associated mental states.

* See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Movable_type and his most famous work

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

#82
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 "…

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.

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

#83
I'm at this very moment testing deepseek-r1, a so called "reasoning" llm, on the excellent "rustlings" tutorial. It is well documented and its solutions are readily available online. It is my lazy go-to-testing for coding tasks to assess for me if and when I have to start looking for a new job and take up software engineering as a hobby. The reason I test with rustlings is to also assess the value as a learning tool for students and future colleagues. Maybe these things have use as a teacher? Also, the rust compiler is really good in offering advice, so there's an excellent baseline to compare the llm-output.

And well, let me put it this way: deepseek-r1 won't be replacing anyone anytime soon. It generates a massive amount of texts, mostly nonsensical and almost always terribly, horribly wrong. But inexperienced devs or beginners, especially beginners, will be confused and will be led down the wrong path, potentially outsourcing rational thought to something that just sounds good, but actually isn't.

Currently, over-reliance on the ramblings of a statistical model seems detrimental to education and ultimately the performance of future devs. As the probably last generation of old school software engineers, who were trained on coffee and tears of frustration, who had to really work code and architecture themselves, golden times might lie ahead, because someone will have to fix the garbage produced en masse by llms.

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

#84

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 opinions of the model that goes on to interact with many more people than a single opinion piece might.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand you might be getting worse at reading those papers yourself. The more youngsters skip the hassle of banging their heads on some topic the less able they will be to learn at later age. There's more to learning than getting information, it's also about processing it (which we are offloading to LLMs). In fact I'd say that the whole point of going through school is to learn how to process and absorb inf…

What if the LLMs are teaching us that long form prose/technical writing is just a really bad, unnatural format for communication but natural dialogues are a good format?

If that was the case every scientific paper would be written as socratic dialogue. But it’s not. Because that’s a good format for beginners, but not for science.

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

#86
What did the researchers expect?

Humans are lazy by nature, they seek shortcuts.

So given the chance to go rote learning for years for an education which in most cases is simply a soon to be forgotten certification vs watching TikTok while letting ChatGPT do the lifting - this is all predictable, even without Behavioral Design, Hooked etc.

And that usually the benefits rise with IQ level - nothing new here, that’s the very definition of IQ.

Learning and academia is hard, and even harder for those with lower IQ scores.

A fool with a tool is still a fool and vice versa.

Motivation seems also at an all time low. Why put in hours when a prompt can works wonders?

Reading a book is a badge of honor nowadays more than ever.

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

#87
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 reflexively. I might be a little slower getting the answer to a trivial problem, but I can still find a solution to a complex problem. I look up integral forms in my pocket book of integrals or on Wolfram Alpha, because even if I could derive the answer myself I don't think I'd be right 100% of the time. So metacognitive laziness has set in for me already.

But I think as long as we can figure out how to stop metacognitive laziness before it turns into full-fledged brain-rot, then we'll be okay. We'll survive as long as we can still teach students how to think critically, and figure out how to let AI assist us rather than turn us into the humans on the ship from Wall-E. I'm a little worried that we'll make some short term mistakes (like not adapting our cirriculum fast enough), but it will work out.

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

#88
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…

> 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...

- Saddle a horse

- Tell time without a watch

- Sew a shirt

- Create fabric to sew a shirt

- Hunt with primitive tools

- Make fire

We can shelter children from AI, or we can teach them how to use it to further themselves. Talk to the Amish if you want to see how it works out when you forgo anything that feels too futuristic. A respectable life, sure. But would any of us reading this choose it?

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the long term downside in your opinion?

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.

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

#90

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…

that's why I mostly use chatgpt with platonic questions like - given context c, i tried idea a, b and c. where there other options that I miss ? - based on this plan, do you see missing efficiency ? etc etc i'm not seeking answers, i'm trying to avoid costly dead ends

I think you are in a minority, you WANT to learn.
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