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The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking [pdf]
- htk 2y agoThat's a brilliant strategy to reach ASI, lowering the bar on humans.
- nosianu 2y agoStudy (PDF): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2025/0... I did not link to it directly because the PDFs title - "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers" - was way too long for the HN title length limit. Abstract (from the PDF): > The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices. > We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so. Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks. > Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks. > Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship. Our insights reveal new design challenges and opportunities for developing GenAI tools for knowledge work.
- unyttigfjelltol 2y ago> Analysing 936 real-world GenAI tool use examples our participants shared, we find that knowledge workers engage in critical thinking primarily to ensure the quality of their work, e.g. by verifying outputs against external sources. The researchers appear to be saying that a lot of people perceive LLM outputs to be superior to whatever they could generate themselves, so users accept the LLM's logical premises uncritically and move on. Sort of a "drive by" use of chatbots. The researchers are not wrong, but intuitively I don't think this is a fair critique of most LLM tasks, or even most users. One of the most compelling LLM use cases is individualized learning or tutoring, and LLM's can support a much deeper dive into arcane scientific or cutting-edge topics than traditional methods. I don't see anything here that suggests the researchers balanced these scenarios against one another.
- an_guy 2y ago> One of the most compelling LLM use cases is individualized learning or tutoring, and LLM's can support a much deeper dive into arcane scientific or cutting-edge topics When you deep dive with llm, everything needs to be verified. LLM could hallucinate or provide incorrect information and you won't even know unless you look it up. Last thing a learner needs is incorrect information presented as facts while learning.
- dr_dshiv 2y agoThe key thing about this paper is the invalidity of the measures. They are essentially looking at the correlation between measures of frequency of AI usage and measures of critical thinking skills. Yet, in the questions themselves, questions like “I always trust the output of AI” (paraphrasing) are in the measures of frequency—and questions like “I question the intentions of the information provided by AI” (which is not a reasonable question, if you use AI regularly) is in the measures of critical thinking. Sorry I don’t have time now to share the actual text. Take a look yourself though, at the end of the paper.
- onetokeoverthe 2y agoThose with critical thinking skills already realize this. Isn't MS heavily involved in AIBS?
- ulfw 2y agoI doubt they mind if their customers lack critical thinking skills
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoThey saw how much Apple was making from their customers.
- userbinator 2y agoUnfortunately nor their employees either, if their products and some occasional comments by them on here are any indication.
- ebiester 2y agoI want them to do the same study with managers. And maybe executives. Does relying on employees kill the same critical thinking skills? Or is this a skill that has to be cultivated like every other skill?
- rqtwteye 2y agoFrom my experience it does. A lot of VPs and higher have no direct experience with the things they are responsible for so can be easily manipulated by smooth talkers. I just attended a strategy meeting where a lot of higher ranks asked questions that clearly showed they have no idea.
- booleandilemma 2y agoAs I expected. When I got a cell phone I forgot everyone's phone numbers, and I'm afraid if I use AI I'll forget how to think.
- withinboredom 2y agoIt probably also depends on whether you trust the AI. I don't, at all. So, I'm often critically thinking about whatever nonsense it spews out.
- ginvok 2y ago"You are not immune to Brain Rot"
- TheNewsIsHere 2y agoI wonder a lot why people use generative AI in the first place. I’ve found in my work that I don’t really have anything to ask an AI to help me with that the generative AIs available to me are particularly good at. I distrust them, but I also haven’t really found a use for them. Which isn’t to say that such generative AIs don’t exist; I just don’t have access to those particular ones due to the nature of my work, and so haven’t tried them. I don’t really have a use for them personally either. I think the closest I come is voice assistants, which I use so sparingly I wouldn’t miss if they were gone.
- tulio_ribeiro 2y agoPeople are worried AI is making us dumber. You hear it all the time. GPS wrecked our sense of direction. Spellcheck killed spelling. Now it’s AI’s turn to supposedly rot our brains. It’s the same old story. New tool comes along, people freak out about what we’re “losing.” But they’re missing the point. It’s never about losing skills, it’s about shifting them. And usually, the shift is upwards. Take GPS. Yeah, okay, maybe you can’t navigate with a paper map anymore. So what? Navigation isn’t about memorizing street names. It’s about getting from A to B. GPS makes that way easier, for way more people. Suddenly, everyone can explore, find their way around unfamiliar places without stress. Is that “dumber”? No, it’s just… better navigation. We optimized for the outcome, not the parlor trick of knowing all the streets by heart. Same with the printing press. Before that, memory was king. Stories, knowledge – all in your head. Then books came along, and the hand-wringing started. “We’ll stop memorizing! Our minds will get soft!” Except, that’s not what happened. Books didn’t make us dumber. They democratized knowledge. Freed up our brains from rote memorization to actually think, analyze, create. We shifted from being walking libraries to… well, to being able to use libraries. Again, better. Now it’s AI and coding. The worry is, AI code assistants will make us worse programmers. Maybe we won’t memorize syntax as well. Maybe we’ll lean on AI to fill in the boilerplate. Fine. So what if we do? Programming isn’t about remembering every function name in some library. It’s about solving problems with code. And AI? Right now, it’s a tool to solve problems faster, more efficiently. To use it well in its current form, you need to be better at the important parts of programming: - Problem Definition: You have to be crystal clear about what you want to build. Vague prompts, vague code. AI kind of forces you to think precisely. - System Design: AI can write code snippets. As of right now, designing a whole system? That’s still on you. And that’s the hard part, the valuable part. - Testing and Debugging: AI isn’t magic. At least, not yet. You still need to test, validate, and fix its output. Critical thinking, still essential. So, yeah, maybe some brain scans will show changes. Brains are plastic. Use a muscle less, it changes. Use a new one more, it grows. Expected. But if someone’s scoring lower on some old-school coding test because they rely on AI, ask yourself: are they actually worse at building software? Or are they just working smarter? Faster? More effectively with the tools available today? This isn’t about “dumbing down.” It’s about cognitive specialization. We’re offloading the stuff machines are good at – rote tasks, memorization, syntax drudgery – so we can focus on what humans are actually good at: abstraction, creativity, problem-solving at a higher level. Don’t get caught up in nostalgia for obsolete skills. Focus on the outcome. Are we building better things? Are we solving harder problems? Are we moving faster in this current technological landscape? If the answer is yes, then maybe “dumber” isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just... evolved. And who knows what’s next? https://tulio.org/blog/dumber-no-different/ https://tulio.org/blog/dumber-no-different/
- eu 2y agoi’m surprised they published this with how much they are invested in ai…
- MattGaiser 2y agoWhy? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if critical thinking is overapplied in most roles or poorly executed. There are many use cases where people not following a process and thinking they know better is an issue.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoThe critical thinking part of me loves seeing takes like this, which immediately rev it up and get it to wonder whether its immediate reaction is really correct. Thank you.
- rafaelmn 2y agoThese sound like ideal roles for bots/automation
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoIf a study comes out which demonstrates to high confidence that some extremely horrible outcome is certain with this technology, would any changes be made? Would we tell OpenAI to close shop? I don't think, with the way our society and politics is set up, we would be able to deal with this. There's too much money, ego, and general inertia at play to change course.
- diggan 2y agoI mean, that question is really a question for yourself. You cannot control others, so assume others will do whatever is quickest, easiest and/or least resistance, outcomes be damned. Of course nothing would immediately do a 180, but if there would be research put out that your brain slowly stops working to more you use LLMs, then you can at least make your own choice from there on out.
- 63stack 2y agoClimate change is already a pretty good precedent on this
- diggan 2y agoThat's too broad though, because there been specific issues we've (humanity) managed to come together to fix, like the "ozone hole" stuff being "solved" with regulations, protocols and public policy, while there are other issues we haven't quite been able to do the same with, all under the umbrella of "climate change".
- barrell 2y agoIf a study comes out, no. But I do not think the trajectory of LLMs is as determined as you may think
- sirolimus 2y agoReview code or waste time thinking and coding? I guess that's the question.
- ginvok 2y ago200 IQ: Waste time rewriting AI slop.
- barrell 2y agoI can either spent 20 minutes arguing with an LLM to get something that maybe does most of what I want, or spend those 25 minutes to get something n that does exactly what I want. I wouldn’t call those 5 minutes times wasted
- tmnvdb 2y agoOr you could learn to use an LLM for what is it good at so that it actually saves you time (arguing with an LLM for a long time a sure sign of not having a lot of experience with this tool..)
- barrell 2y agoA turn of phrase ;-) I spent thousands of hours working with closely with LLMs. It took me a lot longer than it should have to realize they were slowing me down, not speeding me up. I’ll ask the off question here and there, they can be good search engines, but realistically if my time with the LLM can be categorized as “reviewing code,” it would be a waste of my time.
- tmnvdb 2y agoFair enough, I guess as with all tools YMMV and things depend on the kind of work. I also have days where I have no use for them.
- Chance-Device 2y agoI think this study does not say what most people are taking it to say. > our research questions - when and how knowledge workers perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI (RQ1), and when and why do knowledge workers perceive increased/decreased effort for critical thinking due to GenAI (RQ2) This is about the application of critical thinking to AI outputs and in AI workflows. Are people cognitively lazy when some other entity hands them plausible sounding answers? The answer of course is yes. If some entity gives you a good enough result, probably you aren’t going to spend much time improving it unless there is a good reason to do so. Likewise you probably aren’t going to spend a lot of time researching something that AI tells you if it sounds plausible. This is certainly a weakness, but it’s a general weakness in human cognition, and has little to do with AI in and of itself. In my reading, what this study does not say, and does not set out to answer, is whether or not the use of AI makes people generally less able or likely to engage in critical thinking as a result of use of AI.
- raincole 2y agoThe study is basically just... a bunch of self-reports on how people feel about AI usage in their daily job. That's it. The "critical thinking" part is completely self-reported. It's not "how good a person is at critical thinking." It's "how much a person feels they engages in critical thinking." Keyword: feels. It's like all the nutrition studies where they ask people to self-report what they eat.
- dogethrowaway42 2y ago[flagged]
- detourdog 2y agoThe negative karma with no explanation definitely weakens the HN discussion rather than deepening the investigation of a topic.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- williamcotton 2y ago> Thus, knowledge workers with higher levels of trust in GenAI — generally or for specific tasks — perceive engaging in critical thinking activities to be less effortful. A possible explanation, supplemented with our qualitative analysis in RQ1 (see Section 4.3.2), is that trust and reliance on GenAI inhibit the enaction of critical thinking, i.e., users underinvest in critical thinking when using GenAI. There is a reduction in certain kinds of effort when using any kind of tool. Another possible explanation is that using LLMs, much like using a pry bar for leverage with physical energy, provides leverage for cognitive energies. Does the person using a pry bar become less physically fit than if they were removing floorboards by hand or do they just get more work done during the day? I don't think there is a problem in exploring the trade-offs for using any kind of tool or technology but the discussion needs to be balanced. Personally, I use LLMs but I'd say I have a critical understanding of their limitations and when it is better to start using another tool, like a book, to learn the skills required to use the tools to achieve the tasks at hand. I will say that using a tool that provides leverage for cognitive energies allows for the cognition to be applied to other parts of the process, typically higher order. For example, I spend much more time thinking about the overall architecture of the memory model in C applications.
- rochak 2y agoNo shit Sherlock
- bryant 2y agoAny chance the link can be changed to the original paper (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2025/0...) and the title changed to "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking"?
- T-A 2y agoThis would be even better: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-generative-ai-on-critical-thinking-self-reported-reductions-in-cognitive-effort-and-confidence-effects-from-a-survey-of-knowledge-workers/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-imp...
- tsylba 2y agoInteresting, in my experience LLMs hallucinate so much on stuffs I know about that I instinctively challenge most of their assumptions and outputs, and found out that this kind of dialectic exchange bring the most out of the "relationship" so to speak, co creating something greater than the isolation of us two. Relevant 2018 essay by Nicky Case «How To Become A Centaur»: https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-case/release/6 https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-case/release/6
- ghaff 2y agoI haven't used LLMs a lot and have just experimented with them in terms of coding. But about a year ago, I had a job to clean up a bunch of, let's call them, reference architectures. I mostly didn't mess with the actual architecture part or went directly to the original authors. But there wasn't a lot of context setting and background for a lot of them. None of it was rocket science; I could have written myself. But the LLM I used, Bard at the time, gave me a pretty good v 0.9 for some introductory paragraphs. Nothing revelatory but probably saved me an hour or two per architecture even including my time to fixup the results. Generally, nothing was absolutely wrong but some I felt was less relevant and other stuff I felt was missing.
- latexr 2y ago> in my experience LLMs hallucinate so much on stuffs I know about that I instinctively challenge most of their assumptions and outputs In my experience most people don’t do that. Therein lies the problem.
- AndrewDucker 2y agoA warning on this topic, in short story form: http://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.livejournal.com/332946.html http://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.li... (By Scott Alexander)
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- mupuff1234 2y agoDoes that mean that being a manager also kills critical thinking?
- andai 2y agoThe Greeks found that relying on writing kills memory.
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- greesil 2y agoI have this horrible feeling that in the future people are going to walk around with AR glasses and some AI is just doing to tell people what to do all the time. They will become meat robots to do the bidding of some hallucinating model which has been finetuned with an agenda.
- plagiarist 2y agoMany people have already abandoned their mental autonomy to whatever delusions they receive from whatever social network they are on. I suppose the LLM could be worse since it will more directly promote someone's agenda. I just question how much worse it could possibly be.
- SamPatt 2y agoThis is already how society works, you just aren't wearing the glasses. Childhood education, entertainment, social networks are all constantly trying to guide our actions. Agendas are everywhere. AI might actually be more objective or transparent, depending on how it's implemented. The key will be choice - you can either choose not to use it, or you can choose which models you prefer. Unfortunately, most people have little choice in their society.
- caseyy 2y agoI agree with the study participants. Using LLMs makes me feel less capable at some cognitive tasks, but it's hard to say whether I've actually declined or if use of AI has dispelled some of the Dunning-Kruger effect for me around my own skills. For instance, LLMs are excellent at rewriting text in a specific style/tone. I used to believe I was quite good at that, but LLMs always do better. Now I no longer believe I am quite good. Did I become worse at text synthesis, or did I simply become more aware of my skills and limitations? This is emblematic of a broader issue with self-reported data. It'd be good to measure critical thinking skills against earlier benchmarks for a clearer picture. It's also important to not only focus on one skill, because while AI might make certain areas of our mind atrophy, others might now be more engaged. Just like when pocket calculators became popular and we all got worse at mental arithmetic but much better at applied mathematics overall. High level programming languages have made software engineers worse at comp-sci, but much better at applying it; commodification of cars made the average driver much less capable of understanding car mechanics, but much better at driving; and so on. My thesis is that human brainpower is not generally reduced by technological innovation, but changed. One thing's for sure - cognitive changes in society (and especially how they relate to technology) is an area I'd like to see more research in. I think there are a few discoveries to be made there.
- SamPatt 2y agoThat's a great point about how using the models may actually just be revealing our own incompetence, not causing it. Maybe it's a quantity over quality issue. What if we're actually doing more of the thing - or at least we're guiding the process - than we would have if LLMs weren't available, which enables us to become better at recognizing how LLMs are actually beneficial for the task. I remember the story of the two groups of pottery students, one tasked with making as many pots as possible, and the other with making one perfect pot. At the end of the day, the quantity group's pots were also higher quality than the quality group's single pot, simply because they had far more practice. I know I code more with LLMs than I did before.
- cudgy 2y ago“Just like when pocket calculators became popular and we all got worse at mental arithmetic but much better at applied mathematics overall. High level programming languages have made software engineers worse at comp-sci, but much better at applying it; commodification of cars made the average driver much less capable of understanding car mechanics, but much better at driving; and so on.” I don’t agree with any of these conclusions. I guess it’s debatable of course.
- _1tem 2y agoI want a study on the impact of generative AI on knowledge. I fear that AI hallucinations have the potential to destroy all knowledge. For now, when an AI hallucinates, I can still check an established source to see if the fact is correct. But what happens when most established sources are themselves AI generated? There will almost be no ability to verify any fact. The very foundation of society collapses and any shared knowledge. Oh wait, that already happened with flat earthers, Covid and conspiracy theories. But AI may be the final nail in the coffin for Western civilization.
- insane_dreamer 2y agopersonal related example: my 12 year old son is a terrible speller; whenever I've tried to encourage him to improve in it, he's like "why do I need to know how to spell, I just use grammarly". And so we raise a next generation who grow up with AI and see no more value in learning a host of knowledge skills.
- Kye 2y agoThe notion of a correct spelling is a relatively new innovation. I can't come up with a defense even for a conventional spelling that doesn't lean on "people will try to shame you for it," and that doesn't seem like a great reason to do things that add cognitive load for no real benefit.
- an_guy 2y agoWritten communication depends on correct spelling and grammar to a certain extent. Grammarly can only help you so much.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoIf you send an email that is rife with spelling or grammatical mistakes, especially basic ones, your interlocutors are not likely to take you seriously.
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- tarkin2 2y agoDon't exercise your body, become fat. Don't exercise your brain, become stupid. LLMs give us another excuse not to exercise our brains.
- ofrzeta 2y agoI've thought about this myself and try to cultivate a mindset of distrust towards the LLM. It's hard because the way it is set up is just so convincing that you regularly need to remind yourself that it might be bullshitting. Really the user interface should be like "here's a system where you can enter some text and it outputs statistically generated text that might be useful to you". Of course that won't happen because the charade (the conversational interface) is part of its success.