Outsourcing our cognitive processes

Learning takes effort.  LLMs remove the effort to get answers/results.  It’s efficient to solve the immediate problem but removes the beneficial side effect, I.e, learning.  How to stay smart is going to be a big challenge.

Specialists in education and cognition have been studying critical thinking and how to develop it for years, and some have useful tips on how to stay cognitively sharp in the age of AI.

research does not yet show clearly what impact generative AI is having on learning and critical thinking. This is because AI tools are relatively new and varied, the studies so far are conflicting, and too few rigorous or long-term studies have been done.  

The illusion of understanding 

Information found online or supplied by generative AI might actually leave people with the illusion that they understand things. One 2023 study found that people who searched online were more confident in their ability to provide explanations for questions — such as why there are leap years or how zippers work — than were people who read information but did not search. But when asked to actually explain the concepts, those in the search group were less accurate