People just don't think like they used to!
Increased AI use linked to eroding critical thinking skills
Jan 2025, phys.org
Cognitive Offloading - where individuals rely on the tools to reduce mental effort; questions arise about long-term impacts on memory, attention, and problem-solving.Younger participants showed higher dependence ...
It's hard, or near impossible, not to remember that Socrates warned of the alphabet and reading as having the same effect on the youth of ancient Greece. Yet still, this is the recommendation:
The study's findings, if replicated, could have significant implications for educational policy and the integration of AI in professional settings. Schools and universities might want to emphasize critical thinking exercises and metacognitive skill development to counterbalance AI reliance and cognitive effects.
I am not marketing for the AI takeover in any way, but how about the idea that instead of these "tools" causing a decline in critical thinking, they might be allowing us to choose where we use critical thinking...like they might be allowing us to better decide when to decide, and when to leave it to the robots. It's likely that the majority of people, no matter their age, will not ask a robot how to best take care of their mom after their dad dies. Or whether to tell their spouse they've been unfaithful.
Maybe we're actually wasting precious brainpower on stupid decision all day; maybe we're wasting our most important skill over all skills, that of critical thinking, that which sets us apart from every other organism on this planet. And maybe it's the wasted decisions, the wasted thoughts, that we're getting rid of. And maybe it's a sign that the critical thinking tests we use today are actually part of that waste, and we need to devise even more complex surveys to detect the even more complex thinking that we can attain now that we've dumped all the less important stuff.
I mean what happened to the youth of ancient Greece? How were we measuring their intelligence and how might it have changed? Could you imagine what the test would have looked like? And what it would leave out that today we take for granted as basic thinking skills?
via Swiss Business School: Michael Gerlich, AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking, Societies (2025). DOI: 10.3390/soc15010006
Image credit: AI Art - Guy with Megaphone Talking into Laptop - 2023
Post Script:
New essay warns of dangers in measurement illiteracy
Jan 2025, phys.org
"From the American eugenics movement to the 2008 market crash, history is replete with episodes showing the adverse impact that failures of measurement literacy can exact on the enterprise of science and everyday human affairs."
This essay is a good reminder of how complicated science is.
via City College of New York's Grove School of Engineering and several others: Arthur Paul Pedersen et al, Discourse on measurement, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401229121
No comments:
Post a Comment