A new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Oxford, UCLA and MIT is raising fresh concerns about what happens to human problem-solving capacity after even brief exposure to AI assistance.
The study finds that people who used AI assistance performed significantly worse and were significantly more likely to give up once the AI was removed, compared to participants who never had access to it.
In the first experiment involving fraction arithmetic, participants in the AI condition had a significantly lower solve rate than those in the control group and were nearly twice as likely to skip problems entirely rather than attempt them.
The second experiment, using SAT-style reading comprehension problems, replicated the finding almost exactly.
According to the researchers, the data suggests that AI assistance reduces persistence while impairing independent performance.
“After brief AI-assisted sessions (~10 minutes), participants were significantly more likely to give up on problems and performed significantly worse once the AI was removed, compared to participants who never had AI assistance.”
The researchers also say the effects were concentrated among participants who used AI to get direct solutions.
“Persistence costs were concentrated among participants who prompted AI to solve tasks for them directly. Using AI for hints or clarifications did not produce significant impairments.”
They also note that since the effects were seen in math and reading comprehension, the study suggests that AI’s impact on persistence and performance is generalized across domains and not specific to any task.
“These findings raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning. We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained AI use, current AI systems — optimized only for short-term helpfulness — risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.”
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
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