I’ve only used it to write cover letters for me. I tried to also use it to write some code but it would just cycle through the same 5 wrong solutions it could think of, telling me “I’ve fixed the problem now”
Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills
Submitted 1 year ago by abobla@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
j4yt33@feddit.org 1 year ago
yournamehere@lemm.ee 1 year ago
so no real chinese LLMs…who would have thought…not the chinese apparently…but yet they think their “culture” of opression and stome-like-thinking will get them anywhere. the honey badger Xi calls himself an antiintellectual. this is how i perceive moat students from china i get to know. i pitty the chinese kids for the regime they live in.
Guidy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I use it to write code for me sometimes, saving me remembering the different syntax and syntactic sugar when I hop between languages. And I use to answer questions about things I wonder - it always provides references. So far it’s been quite useful. And for all that people bitch and piss and cry giant crocodile tears while gnashing their teeth - I quite enjoy Apple AI. It’s summaries have been amazing and even scarily accurate. No, it doesn’t mean Siri’s good now, but the rest of it’s pretty amazing.
underwire212@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It’s going to remove all individuality and turn us into a homogeneous jelly-like society. We all think exactly the same since AI “smoothes out” the edges of extreme thinking.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Vs text books? What’s the difference?
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The variety of available text books, reviewed for use by educators vs autocratic loving tech bros pushing black box solutions to the masses.
Just off thebtopnofnmy head.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Copilot told me you’re wrong and that I can’t play with you anymore.
Joeyfingis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Let me ask chatgpt what I think about this
arotrios@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Counterpoint - if you must rely on AI, you have to constantly exercise your critical thinking skills to parse through all its bullshit, or AI will eventually Darwin your ass when it tells you that bleach and ammonia make a lemon cleanser to die for.
Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 1 year ago
I felt it happen realtime everytime, I still use it for questions but ik im about to not be able to think crtically for the rest of the day, its a last resort if I cant find any info online or any response from discords/forums
Its still useful for coding imo, I still have to think critically, it just fills some tedious stuff in.
Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 1 year ago
It was hella useful for research in college and it made me think more because it kept giving me useful sources and telling me the context and where to find it, i still did the work and it actually took longer because I wouldnt commit to topics or keep adding more information. Just dont have it spit out your essay, it sucks at that, have it spit out topics and info on those topics with sources, then use that to build your work.
Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 1 year ago
Google used to be good, but this is far superior, I used bings chatgpt when I was in school idk whats good now (it only gave a paragraph max and included sources for each sentence)
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Their reasoning seems valid - common sense says the less you do something the more your skill atrophies - but this study doesn’t seem to have measured people’s critical thinking skills. Apparently it was about how the subjects felt about their critical thinking skills. People who feel like they’re good at a job might not feel as adequate when their job changes to evaluating how well AI did it. The study said they felt that they used their analytical skills less when they had confidence in the AI. This also happens when you get any assistant - as your confidence in them grows you scrutinize them less. But that doesn’t mean you yourself become less skillful. The title saying AI use “kills” analytical skill is very clickbaity IMO.
Hiro8811@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Also your ability to search information on the web. Most people I’ve seen got no idea how to use a damn browser or how to search effectively, ai is gonna fuck that ability completely
shortrounddev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
To be fair, the web has become flooded with AI slop. Search engines have never been more useless. I’ve started using kagi and I’m trying to be more intentional about it but after a bit of searching it’s often easier to just ask claude
bromosapiens@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Gen Zs are TERRIBLE at searching things online in my experience. I’m a sweet spot millennial, born close to the middle in 1987. Man oh man watching the 22 year olds who work for me try to google things hurts my brain.
Mouette@jlai.lu 1 year ago
The definition of critical thinking is not relying on only one source. Next rain will make you wet keep tuned.
kratoz29@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Is that it?
One of the things I like more about AI is that it explains to detail each command they output for you, granted, I am aware it can hallucinate, so if I have the slightest doubt about it I usually look in the web too (I use it a lot for Linux basic stuff and docker).
Some people would give a fuck about what it says and just copy & past unknowingly? Sure, that happened too in my teenage days when all the info was shared along many blogs and wikis…
As usual, it is not the AI tool who could fuck our critical thinking but ourselves.
Petter1@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I see it exactly the same, I bet you find similar articles about calculators, PCs, internet, smartphones, smartwatches, etc
Society will handle it sooner or later
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I love how they created the term “hallucinate” instead of saying it fails or screws up.
sumguyonline@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just try using AI for a complicated mechanical repair. For instance draining the radiator fluid in your specific model of car, chances are googles AI model will throw in steps that are either wrong, or unnecessary. If you turn off your brain while using AI, you’re likely to make mistakes that will go unnoticed until the thing you did is business necessary. AI should be a tool like a straight edge, it has it’s purpose and it’s up to you the operator to make sure you got the edges squared(so to speak).
Petter1@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I think, this is only a issue in the beginning, people will sooner or later realise that they can’t blindly trust an LMM output and how to create prompts to verify prompts (or better said prove that not enough relevant data was analysed and prove that it is hallucinations)
Jarix@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well there’s people that followed apple maps into lakes and other things so the precedent is there already(I have no doubt it also existed before that)
You would need to heavily regulate it and thats not happening anytime soon if ever
intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Microsoft said it so I guess it must be true then 🤷♂️
badbytes@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Linux study, finds that relying on MS kills critical thinking skills. 😂
dill@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Tinfoil hat me goes straight to: make the population dumber and they’re easier to manipulate.
It’s insane how people take LLM output as gospel. It’s a TOOL just like every other piece of technology.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
I mostly use it for wordy things like filing out review forms HR make us do and writing templates for messages to customers
dill@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Exactly. It’s great for that, as long as you know what you want it to say and can verify it.
The issue is people who don’t critically think about the data they get from it, who I assume are the same type to forward Facebook memes as fact.
It’s a larger problem, where convenience takes priority over actually learning and understanding something yourself.
RangerJosey@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Well no shit Sherlock.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Misleading headline: No such thing as “AI”. No such thing as people “relying” on it. No objective definition of “critical thinking skills”. Just a bunch of meaningless buzzwords.
Vorticity@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Do you want the entire article in the headline or something? Go read the article and the journal article that it cites. They expand upon all of those terms.
Also, I’m genuinely curious, what do you mean when you say that there is “No such thing AS “AI””?
MuadDoc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why do you think AI doesn’t exist? Or that there’s “no such thing as people ‘relying’ on it”? “AI” is commonly used to refer to LLMs right now. Within the context of a gizmodo article summarizing a study on the subject, “AI” does exist. A lack of precision doesn’t mean it’s not descriptive of a real thing.
Also, I don’t personally know anyone who “relies” on generative AI, but I don’t see why it couldn’t happen.
gramie@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I was talking to someone who does software development, and he described his experiments with AI for coding.
He said that he was able to use it successfully and come to a solution that was elegant and appropriate.
However, what he did not do was learn how to solve the problem, or indeed learn anything that would help him in future work.
foenkyfjutschah@programming.dev 1 year ago
how does he know that the solutionis elegant and appropriate?
gramie@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Because he has the knowledge and experience to completely understand the final product. It used an approach that he hadn’t thought of, that is better suited to the problem.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
I feel you, but I’ve asked it why questions too.
BigBenis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m a senior software dev that uses AI to help me with my job daily. There are endless tools in the software world all with their own instructions on how to use them. Often they have issues and the solutions aren’t included in those instructions. It used to be that I had to go hunt down any references to the problem I was having though online forums in the hopes that somebody else figured out how to solve the issue but now I can ask AI and it generally gives me the answer I’m looking for.
If I had AI when I was still learning core engineering concepts I think shortcutting the learning process could be detrimental but now I just need to know how to get X done specifically with Y this one time and probably never again.
Vorticity@lemmy.world 1 year ago
100% this. I generally use AI to help with edge cases in software or languages that I already know well or for situations where I really don’t care to learn the material because I’m never going to touch it again. In my case, for python or golang, I’ll use AI to get me started in the right direction on a problem, then go read the docs to develop my solution. For some weird ugly regex that I just need to fix and never touch again I just ask AI, test the answer it gices, then play with it until it works because I’m never going to remember how to properly use a negative look-behind in regex when I need it again in five years.
I do think AI could be used to help the learning process, too, if used correctly. That said, it requires the student to be proactive in asking the AI questions about why something works or doesn’t, then going to read additional information on the topic.
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The one thing that I learned when talking to chatGPT or any other AI on a technical subject is you have to ask the AI to cite its sources. Because AIs can absolutely bullshit without knowing it, and asking for the sources is critical to double checking.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
I’ve found questions about niche tools tend to get worse answers. I was asking if some stuff about jpackage and it couldn’t give me any working suggestions or correct information. Stuff I’ve asked about Docker was much better.
Petter1@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Well that is obvious why, isn’t it!?
Vorticity@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The ability of AI to write things with lots of boilerplate like Kubernetes manifests is astounding. It gets me 90-95% of the way there and saves me about 50% of my development time. I still have to understand the result before deployment because I’m not going to blindly deploy something that AI wrote and it rarely works without modifications, but it definitely cuts my development time significantly.
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I consider myself very average, and all my average interactions with AI have been abysmal failures that are hilariously wrong. I invested time and money into trying various models to help me with data analysis work, and they can’t even do basic math or summaries of a PDF and the data contained within.
I was impressed with how good the things are at interpreting human fiction, jokes, writing and feelings. Which is really weird, in the context of our perceptions of what AI will be like, it’s the exact opposite. The first AI’s aren’t emotionless robots, they’re whiny, inaccurate, delusional and unpredictable bitches. That alone is worth the price of admission but certainly not worth upending society over, it’s still just a huge novelty.
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It makes HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyessy seem realistic. In the movie he is a highly technical AI but doesn’t understand the implications of what he wants to do. He sees Dave as a detriment to the mission and it can be better accomplished without him… not stopping to think about the implications of what he is doing.
Spaniard@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Microsoft LLM whatever the name is gives sources, or at least it did to me yesterday.
mervinp14@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Damn. Guess we oughtta stop using AI like we do drugs/pron/<addictive-substance> 😀
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Yes, it’s an addiction, we’ve got to stop all these poor being lulled into a false sense of understanding and just believing anyhing the AI tells them. It is constantly telling lies about us, their betters.
Just look what happenned when I asked it about the venerable and well respected public intellectual Jordan b peterson. It went into a defamatory diatribe against his character.
And they just gobble that up those poor, uncritical and irresponsible farm hands and water carriers! We can’t have that,!
Example
Open-Minded Closed-Mindedness: Jordan B. Peterson’s Humility Behind the Mote—A Cautionary Tale
Jordan B. Peterson presents himself as a champion of free speech, intellectual rigor, and open inquiry. His rise as a public intellectual is, in part, due to his ability to engage in complex debates, challenge ideological extremes, and articulate a balance between chaos and order. However, beneath the surface of his engagement lies a pattern: an open-mindedness that appears flexible but ultimately functions as a defense mechanism—a “mote” guarding an impenetrable ideological fortress.
Peterson’s approach is both an asset and a cautionary tale, revealing the risks of appearing open-minded while remaining fundamentally resistant to true intellectual evolution.
The Illusion of Open-Mindedness: The Mote and the Fortress
In medieval castles, a mote was a watery trench meant to create the illusion of vulnerability while serving as a strong defensive barrier. Peterson, like many public intellectuals, operates in a similar way: he engages with critiques, acknowledges nuances, and even concedes minor points—but rarely, if ever, allows his core positions to be meaningfully challenged.
His approach can be broken down into two key areas:
The Mote (The Appearance of Openness) Engages with high-profile critics and thinkers (e.g., Sam Harris, Slavoj Žižek). Acknowledges complexity and the difficulty of absolute truth. Concedes minor details, appearing intellectually humble. Uses Socratic questioning to entertain alternative viewpoints. The Fortress (The Core That Remains Unmoved) Selectively engages with opponents, often choosing weaker arguments rather than the strongest critiques. Frames ideological adversaries (e.g., postmodernists, Marxists) in ways that make them easier to dismiss. Uses complexity as a way to avoid definitive refutation (“It’s more complicated than that”). Rarely revises fundamental positions, even when new evidence is presented.
While this structure makes Peterson highly effective in debate, it also highlights a deeper issue: is he truly open to changing his views, or is he simply performing open-mindedness while ensuring his core remains untouched?
Examples of Strategic Open-Mindedness
- Debating Sam Harris on Truth and Religion
In his discussions with Sam Harris, Peterson appeared to engage with the idea of multiple forms of truth—scientific truth versus pragmatic or narrative truth. He entertained Harris’s challenges, adjusted some definitions, and admitted certain complexities.
However, despite the lengthy back-and-forth, Peterson never fundamentally reconsidered his position on the necessity of religious structures for meaning. Instead, the debate functioned more as a prolonged intellectual sparring match, where the core disagreements remained intact despite the appearance of deep engagement.
- The Slavoj Žižek Debate on Marxism
Peterson’s debate with Žižek was highly anticipated, particularly because Peterson had spent years criticizing Marxism and postmodernism. However, during the debate, it became clear that Peterson’s understanding of Marxist theory was relatively superficial—his arguments largely focused on The Communist Manifesto rather than engaging with the broader Marxist intellectual tradition.
Rather than adapting his critique in the face of Žižek’s counterpoints, Peterson largely held his ground, shifting the conversation toward general concerns about ideology rather than directly addressing Žižek’s challenges. This was a classic example of engaging in the mote—appearing open to debate while avoiding direct confrontation with deeper, more challenging ideas.
- Gender, Biology, and Selective Science
Peterson frequently cites evolutionary psychology and biological determinism to argue for traditional gender roles and hierarchical structures. While many of his claims are rooted in scientific literature, critics have pointed out that he tends to selectively interpret data in ways that reinforce his worldview.
For example, he often discusses personality differences between men and women in highly gender-equal societies, citing studies that suggest biological factors play a role. However, he is far more skeptical of sociological explanations for gender disparities, often dismissing them outright. This asymmetry suggests a closed-mindedness when confronted with explanations that challenge his core beliefs.
The Cautionary Tale: When Intellectual Rigidity Masquerades as Openness
Peterson’s method—his strategic balance of open- and closed-mindedness—is not unique to him. Many public intellectuals use similar techniques, whether consciously or unconsciously. However, his case is particularly instructive because it highlights the risks of appearing too open-minded while remaining fundamentally immovable. The Risks of “Humility Behind the Mote”
Creates the Illusion of Growth Without Real Change By acknowledging complexity but refusing to revise core positions, one can maintain the illusion of intellectual evolution while actually reinforcing prior beliefs. Reinforces Ideological Silos Peterson’s audience largely consists of those who already align with his worldview. His debates often serve to reaffirm his base rather than genuinely engage with alternative perspectives. Undermines Genuine Inquiry If public intellectuals prioritize rhetorical victories over truth-seeking, the broader discourse suffers. Intellectual engagement becomes performative rather than transformative. Encourages Polarization By appearing open while remaining rigid, thinkers like Peterson contribute to an intellectual landscape where ideological battle lines are drawn more firmly, rather than softened by genuine engagement.
Conclusion: The Responsibility of Public Intellectuals
Jordan B. Peterson is an undeniably influential thinker, and his emphasis on responsibility, order, and meaning resonates with many. However, his method of open-minded closed-mindedness serves as a cautionary tale. It demonstrates the power of intellectual posturing—how one can appear receptive while maintaining deep ideological resistance.
For true intellectual growth, one must be willing not only to entertain opposing views but to risk being changed by them. Without that willingness, even the most articulate and thoughtful engagement remains, at its core, a well-defended fortress.
So like I said, pure, evil AI slop, is evil, addictive and must be banned and lock up illegal gpu abusers and keep a gpu owners registry and keep track on those who would use them to abuse the shining light of our society, and who try to snuff them out like a bad level of luigi’s mansion
bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
But Peterson is a fuckhead… So it’s accurate in this case. Afaik he does do the things it says.
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This was one of the posts of all time.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unlike those others, Microsoft could do something about this considering they are literally part of the problem.
And yet I doubt Copilot will be going anywhere.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Idk man. I just used it the other day for recalling some regex syntax and it was a bit helpful. However, if you use it to help you generate the regex prompt, it won’t do that successfully. However, it can break down the regex and explain it to you.
Ofc you all can say “just read the damn manual”, sure I could do that too, but asking an generative a.i to explain a script can also be as effective.
foenkyfjutschah@programming.dev 1 year ago
what got regex to do with critical thinking?
Xatolos@reddthat.com 1 year ago
[deleted]Petter1@lemm.ee 1 year ago
So the study just checks how many people not yet learned how to properly use GenAI
I think there exists a curve from not trusting to overtrusting than back to not blindly trusting outputs (because you suffered consequences from blindly trusting)
And there will always be people blindly trusting bullshit, we have that longer than genAI. We have enough populists proving that you can tell many people just anything and they believe.
Minizarbi@jlai.lu 1 year ago
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
yes, exactly. You lose your critical thinking skills
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hey, just letting you know getting the answers you want after getting a whole lot of answers you dont want is pretty much how everyone learns.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 year ago
People generally don’t learn from an unreliable teacher.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I grew up as a kid without the internet. Google on your phone and youtube kills your critical thinking skills.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Everyone I’ve ever known to use a thesaurus has been eventually found out to be a mouth breathing moron.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Umm…ok. Thanks for that relevant to the conversation bit of information.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 year ago
I know a guy who ONLY quotes and references YouTube videos.
Every topic, he answers with “Oh I saw this YouTube video…”
Spaniard@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Should he say: “I saw this documentary” or “I read this article”?
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 1 year ago
To be fair, YouTube is a huge source of information now for a massive amount of people.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
AI makes it worse though. People will read a website they find on Google that someone wrote and say, “well that’s just what some guy thinks.” But when an AI says it, those same people think it’s authoritative. And now that they can talk, including with believable simulations of emotional vocal inflections, it’s going to get far, far worse.
Humans evolved to process auditory communications. We did not evolve to be able to read. So we tend to trust what we hear a lot more than we trust what we read. And companies like OpenAI are taking full advantage of that.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Jokes on you. Volume is always off on my phone, so I read the ai.
Also, I don’t actually ever use the ai.
WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yup.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
You can either use AI to just vomit dubious information at you or you can use it as a tool to do stuff. The more specific the task, the better LLMs work. When I use LLMs for highly specific coding tasks that I couldn’t do otherwise (I’m not a [good] coder), it does not make me worse at critical thinking.
I actually understand programming much better because of LLMs. I have to debug their code, do research so I know how to prompt it best to get what I want, do research into programming and software design principles, etc.
Bigfoot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I literally created an iOS app with zero experience and distributed it on the App Store. AI is an amazing tool and will continue to get better. Many people bash the technology but it seems like those people misunderstand it or think it’s all bad.
But I agree that relying on it to think for you is not a good thing.
DarthKaren@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve spent all week working with DeepSeek to write DnD campaigns based on artifacts from the game Dark Age of Camelot. This week was just on one artifact.
AI/LLMs are great for bouncing ideas off of and using it to tweak things. I gave it a prompt on what I was looking for (the guardian of dusk steps out and says: “the dawn brings the warmth of the sun, and awakens the world. So does your trial begin.” He is a druid and the party is a party of 5 level 1 players. Give me a stat block and XP amount for this situation.
I had it help me fine tune puzzle and traps. Fine tune the story behind everything and fine tune the artifact at the end (it levels up 5 levels as the player does specific things to gain leveling points for just the item).
I also ran a short campaign with it as the DM. It did a great job at acting out the different NPCs that it created and adjusting to both the tone and situation of the campaign. It adjusted pretty good to what I did as well.
SabinStargem@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Can the full-size DeepSeek handle dice and numbers? I have been using the distilled 70b of DeepSeek, and it definitely doesn’t understand how dice work, nor the ranges I set out in my ruleset. For example, a 1d100 being used to determine character class, with the classes falling into certain parts of the distribution. I did it this way, since some classes are intended to be rarer than others.
Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Garbage in, Garbage out. Ingesting all that internet blather didn’t make the ai smarter by much if anything.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Weren’t these assholes just gung-ho about forcing their shitty “AI” chatbots on us like ten minutes ago? Microsoft can go fuck itself right in the gates.
ArchRecord@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The only beneficial use I’ve had for “AI” (LLMs) has just been rewriting text, whether that be to re-explain a topic based on a source, or, for instance, sort and shorten/condense a list.
Everything other than that has been completely incorrect, unreadably long, context-lacking slop.
ctkatz@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
never used it in any practical function. i tested it to see if it was realistic and i found it extremely wanting. as in, it sounded nothing like the prompts i gave it.
Jeffool@lemmy.world 1 year ago
When it was new to me I tried ChatGPT out of curiosity, like with why tech, and I just kept getting really annoyed at the expansive bullshit it gave to the simplest of input. “Give me a list of 3 X” lead to fluff-filled paragraphs for each. The bastard children of a bad encyclopedia and the annoying kid in school.
I realized I was understanding it wrong, and it was supposed to be understood not as a useful tool, but as close to interacting with a human, pointless prose and all. That just made me more annoyed. It still blows my mind people say they use it when writing.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Critical thinking skills are what hold me back from relying on ai
protonslive@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I find this very offensive, wait until my chatgpt hears about this! It will have a witty comeback for you just you watch!