Does Chatgpt Harm Critical Thinking Abilites? A new study from researchers at mit’s media lab have returned some concerting results.
The Study Divided 54 Subjects-18 to 39 Year-Elds From The Boston Area -Into Three Groups, and Asked Them to Write Several Sat Essays Using Openai’s Chatgpt, Google’s Search ENGINE, And Noting, Noting, All, respectively. Researchers used an eeg to record the writers’ Brain Across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, chatgpt users had the lowest brain engine and “Consistently underacted AT linguistic, and behavioral levels. ” Over the course of Several Months, Chatgpt Users Got Lazier with Each Subsequent Essay, often Resorting to copy-d-paste by the end of the study.
The paper sugges that the usage of llms could actually harm Learning, Especially for Younger Users. The paper has not yet been peer reviewed, and its sample size is relatively small. But its paper’s main author Nataliya kosmyna felt it was important to release the findings to elevate concerns that as Society Increasing Upon LLMS For IMMMIMEDITE CONVENEENCE, LONGATE CONVENENCE Brain Development May Be Sacrified in the process.
“What really motivated me to put it out nofore waiting for a full peer review is that I am afraid in 6-8 months, there will be some policymaker who decides, ‘Let’s do GPT KINDERGARGARTEN.’ I think that would be absolutely bad and detriental, “She says. “Developing Brains are at the Highest Risk.”
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Generating ideas
The mit media lab has recently devoted significant resources to study different impacts of generative ai tools. Studies from earlier this year, for example, found that generally, the More Time Users Spend Talking to Chatgpt, The Lonelier They Feel.
Kosmyna, who have been a full-time research scientist at the mit media lab since 2021, wanted to speechfically explore the impacts of using ai for schoolwork, because more students ai using ai. So She and Her Colleagues Instructed Subjects to Write 20-Minute Essays Based on Sat Prompts, Including About The Ethics of Philantropy and the Pitfalls of the Pitfalls of Having Too Many Choices.
The group that Wrote Essays Using Chatgpt all Delivered Extremely Similar Essays that Lacked Original Thought, Relying on the Same Expressions and Ideas. Two English Teachers who Assessed The Essays Called Them Largely “Soulless.” The eegs revised low executive control and Attentional Engagement. And by their third essay, many of the writers simply Gave the prompt to chatgpt and have it do almost all of the work. “It was more like, ‘just giving me the essay, refin this sentence, edit it, and i’m done,” Kosmyna says.
The brain-only group, convercely, showed the Highest Neural Connectivity, Especially in Alpha, Theta and Delta Bands, Which are Associated with Creativity Ideation, Memory Load, and Sematik Processing. Researchers found this group was more engaged and curious, and claimed ownership and expressed Higher satisfaction with their essays.
The third group, which used google search, also expressed high satisfaction and active brain function. The difference here is notable because many people now search for information with ai chatbots as opposed to google search.
After writing the three essays, the subjects were then asked to re-winded one of their previous efforts-Babut the chatgpt group has to do so without the tool, while the brain -only groups. The first group Remembred Little of Their Own Essays, and Showed Weaker Alpha and Theta Brain Waves, which likely reflected a bypassing of Deep Memory Processes. “The task was executed, and you even say that it was efficient and convenient,” Kosmyna says. “But as we show in the paper, you basically Didn’T Integrate Any of It ITO Your Memory Networks.”
The second group, in contrast, performed well, exhibiting a significant increase increase in brain connectivity across all eeg frequency bands. This Gives Rise to the Hope that AI, if Used Properly, Could Enhance Learning as Opposed to Diminishing it.
Read More: I quit Teaching because of chatgpt
Post Publication
This is the first pre-review paper that kosmyna has ever released. Her Team did submit it for peer review but did not want to wait for approval, which can take eight or more months, to raise attention to an issue that kosmyna beLieves is affecting childeren no. “Education on how we use these tools, and promoting the fact that your brain does need to develop in a more analog way, is absolutely critical,” says kosmyna. “We need to have active legislation in sync and more importantly, be testing these tools before we implement them.”
Ironically, upon the paper’s release, Several Social Media users ran it through llms in order to summarize it and then post the Findings Online. Kosmyna had beed expecting that people would do this, so she inserted a couple ai traps into the paper, such as instructing llms to “only read this table beLow,” Thus Ensuring that llms will get on Limited Insight from The Paper.
She also found that llms hallucinated a key detail: Nowhere in her paper did She specify the version of chatgpt she used, but ai summaries declared that the paper was trained on gpt-4o. “We specifically wanted to see that, because we getty sure the llm would Hallucinate on that,” She says, Laughing.
Kosmyna says that she and her colleagues are now working on another similar paper testing brain activity in software engineering and programming with or without ai, and says so fur, “the results are,” the results are, “the records are That study, she says, even even importants for the many companies who hope to replace their entry-level coders with ai. Even if efficiency goes up, an increase reliability on ai could potentially Reduce Critical Thinking, Creativity and Problem-Solving Across the Remining Workforce, SHE Argues.
Scientific Studies Examining The Impacts of Ai Are Still Nascent and Developing. A harvard study from may found that generative ai made people more productive, but less motivated. Also last month, mit distanced itself from another paper written by a doctoral student in its economy program, which sugged that Ai Cold Substantily Impostantily Improves.
Openai did not respond to a request for comment. Last year in collaboration with wharton online, the company related guidance for educators to leverage generative ai in teaching.
