Using AI reduces critical thinking skills
A new study shows that an overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI) to perform certain tasks reduces critical thinking skills.
The study, conducted by Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft, found that people who use AI regularly for basic, routine tasks will lose their ability for complex critical thinking.
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I saw the same article. Unfortunately this will not result in any change to the direction of AI. I'm a consultant in the tech industry and basically AI is being shoved down our throats by executives and "leaders" who fear missing out or being left behind. They care little for the impacts on the workforce or the environment. I do feel AI has a place and can be helpful, but those areas are yet to truly be discovered. In the meantime, we'll have to wade through lots of "noise" about it.
That being said, I've used Logos's AI a few times and have been rather impressed with it so far. One thing to keep in mind is there's an opportunity to really think through what you're looking for and allowing that to shape your question(s). I really like how it provides the sources for its findings so that you can verify and look deeper into particular resources. I do believe it can be a great tool to assist with bible study, not a way to replace it. I do not feel that way about the other AI tools being pushed by Open AI, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. I've witnessed Open AI literally make stuff up that was not accurate and Google's Gemini is plagued with biases.
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It's unlikely to spoil our sense of humour soon though:
Me: Chat GPT, can you explain this paper to me - uploaded the paper…Chat gpt responds with a dry summary.
Me: Did it occur to you that my question was ironic humour?
Chat gpt: I’m afraid I didn’t catch the irony in your original request. Being a language model, I tend to interpret requests literally unless the intent or comedic cues are very explicit. If you had a different angle in mind or were making a joke, it unfortunately flew straight over my metaphorical head!גַּם־חֹשֶׁךְ֮ לֹֽא־יַחְשִׁ֪יךְ מִ֫מֶּ֥ךָ וְ֭לַיְלָה כַּיּ֣וֹם יָאִ֑יר כַּ֝חֲשֵׁיכָ֗ה כָּאוֹרָֽה
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The critical thinking thing pretty much left the barn, with social media. I'm unsubscribed, but I'd assume Logos' ability to create questions would be a plus. Lots of questions.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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The article seems subjective. I used AI and I double check always, so if anything, it’s helping me not to just take what AI says, but rather check it which requires critical thinking.
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So what exactly is wrong with AI doing our research, our searching, our reading, our thinking, our theology, our faith? Just submit and realize that we live in an AR world and that the old ways of doing and thinking are so inefficient and passé. Don't you want the promise of the future?
Instead of Artificial Intelligence, I prefer to continue to rely on Divine Intelligence instructing my Natural Dullness (Ps 32:8, John 16:13a)
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My initial response was just being too lazy to think critically about it so I was going to have Chat GPT come up with a forceful rebuttal. @John Goodman beat me to the punch.
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overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI) to perform certain tasks reduces critical thinking skills.
I'm surprised that they found enough workers with critical thinking skills at the start to measure any difference. I blame American society and its anti-intellectual basis undermining the inclusion of critical thinking skills in our schools.
Jumping off the soap box: AI has been used for complex medical diagnoses for years as an essential aid for a doctor's critical thinking. AI as of yet does not "thinking critically" - what it does is amass a base of knowledge more complete than any human could acquire in their brain. And if that knowledge is reliable (even if erroneous rejected positions), AI can do a fantastic job of bringing the rights bits of information to the attention of the user.
However, there is a key sentence in the article that gives away too much about the article and the study
overall, those who trusted the accuracy of the AI tools found themselves thinking less critically, while those who trusted the tech less used more critical thought when going back over AI outputs.
Those who trust AI tools, almost by definition, do less critical thinking. No credible critical thinker would trust AI generally although specific AI tools in specific areas are trustworthy. Those who trust AI less already have exhibited critical thought skills even before using the AI tool. Sure sounds like a poor study design with intentional bias to prove the hypothesis to me.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Leading large crowds has always been the skill of leaders: making followers to a choir singing the same. Critical thinkers are dissidents and tend to disappear with more or less natural selection.
But we humans seem to have a born gift to detect cheating, or the skill to suspect that something is not quite right. I would expect that AI will increase critical thinking skills.
The main problem is that we are products of our own culture, and thus we are in a cognitive trap. AI sometimes provides stupid answers, but those oddities may help us to get out of a thinking trap. (My picture from 1993, Aberdares mountains in Kenya.)
Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11
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AI as of yet does not "thinking critically" - what it does is amass a base of knowledge more complete than any human could acquire in their brain.
I am not sure that AI has any “knowledge” at all. It amasses information, but has no wisdom or knowledge. It processes and analyzes information mathematically, which is (as you know) the only real activity that a computer can do.The word intelligence also does not apply, but is used because AI can appear to be intelligent.
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