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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

#91

Post by klodolph »

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…

> They aren't considering the long term downside to this.

This echoes sentiments from the 2010s centered around hiring. Companies generally don’t want to hire junior engineers and train them—this is an investment with risks of no return for the company doing the training. Basically, you take your senior engineers away from projects so they can train the juniors, and then the juniors now have the skills and credentials to get a job elsewhere. Your company ends up in the hole, with a negative ROI for hiring the junior.

Tragedy of the commons. Same thing to day, different mechanism. Are we going to end up with a shortage of skilled software engineers? Maybe. IMO, the industry is so incredibly wasteful in how engineers are allocated and what problems they are told to work on that it can probably deal with shortages for a long time, but that’s a separate discussion.

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

#92

Post by diggan »

_the_inflator wrote: post #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 th…

> 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.

Would you argue that having books/written words also made people more lazy and be able to remember less? Because some people argued (at the time) that having written words would make humanity less intellectual as a whole, but I think consensus is that it led to the opposite.

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

#93

Post by StefanBatory »

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…

Take a small notebook, Anki flashcards, or even small notes.

And work on learning some trivia purely to help you out with memory.

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

#94

Post by delusional »

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 indication yet that use of AI is harming business outcome

What a sad sentence to read in a discussion about cognitive lazyness. I think people should think, not because it improves business outcomes, but because it's a beautiful activity.

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

#95

Post by ziddoap »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #88
ziddoap wrote: 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... - Saddl…

>How many of us can still...

Yes, this is what I meant by the calculator part of my comment. You've got some other good examples.

>learning when to ignore AI, learning how to take information and turn it into something practical.

This is what I meant by using LLMs as a tool rather than an end.

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

#96

Post by agumonkey »

roydivision wrote: post #90
agumonkey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

probably, or should I say, I don't want to rot.. It's true that I love the feeling of learning mostly on my own, but i can be lazy too, it's just that I see a parallel with abusing chatgpt and never doing any physical activity.

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

#97

Post by StefanBatory »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #21

How's this any different than someone 5+ years ago blindly going by whatever a Google result said about anything? I've run into conflicting answers to things off Google's first page of results, some things aren't 100% certain and require more research. I'm not surprised if this will make some lazier since you don't need to do the legwork of reading, but how many don't read only the headlines of articles before they s…

For code; at least you would have to copy and paste it, and then modify, even if ever so slightly, to make it fit your code.

Now, "Claude, fix that for me".

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

#98

Post by diggan »

amrocha wrote: post #82
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> AI doesn’t provide directions, it navigates for you.

LLMs (try to) give you what you're asking for. If you ask for directions, you'll get something that resembles that, if you ask it to 100% navigate, that's what you get.

> and this paper demonstrates that people are likely to take answers for granted.

Could you point out where exactly this is demonstrated in this paper? As far as I can tell from the study, people who used ChatGPT for the studying did better than the ones that didn't, with no different in knowledge retention.

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

#99

Post by n4r9 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #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 th…

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

This is not obvious to me, and certainly is not the "definition" of IQ. There are tools that become less useful the more intelligent you are, such as multiplication tables. IQ is defined by a set of standardized tests that attempt to quantify human intelligence, and has some correlations with social, educational and professional performance, but it's not clear why it would help with use of AI tools.

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

#100

Post by tkellogg »

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…

Right, there's already some very encouraging trends (this study out of Nigeria). Clearly AI can lead to laziness, but it can also increase our intelligence. So it's not a simple "better" or "worse", it's a new thing that we have to navigate.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/From-chalkboards-to...

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