Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills
-
Can confirm. I've stopped using my brain at work. Moreso.
-
You're right it's not the same thing as critical thinking, but it is a skill we've lost. How many skills have we lost throughout history due to machines and manufacturing?
This is the same tale over and over again - these people weren't using critical thinking to begin with if they were trusting a prediction engine with their tasks.
-
Well at least they communicate such findings openly and don't try to hide them. Other than ExxonMobil who saw global warming coming due to internal studies since the 1970s and tried to hide or dispute it, because it was bad for business.
-
Microsoft will just make a subscription AI for that, BaaS.
-
Chat GPT et al; "To improve your critical thinking skills you should rely completely on AI."
-
-
It was already soooooo dead out there that I doubt they considered this systematic properly in the study...
-
Which we will rebrand "Bullshit as a service"!
-
This isn't a profound extrapolation. It's akin to saying "Kids who cheat on the exam do worse in practical skills tests than those that read the material and did the homework." Or "kids who watch TV lack the reading skills of kids who read books".
Asking something else to do your mental labor for you means never developing your brain muscle to do the work on its own. By contrast, regularly exercising the brain muscle yields better long term mental fitness and intuitive skills.
This isn't predicated on the gullibility of the practitioner. The lack of mental exercise produces gullibility.
Its just not something particular to AI. If you use any kind of 3rd party analysis in lieu of personal interrogation, you're going to suffer in your capacity for future inquiry.
-
Learning how to evade and disable AI is becoming a critical thinking skill unto itself. Feels a bit like how I've had to learn to navigate around advertisements and other intrusive 3rd party interruptions while using online services.
-
Good thing most Americans already don't possess those!
-
I thought that's what it means?
-
Memorization is not the same thing as critical thinking.
A library of internalized axioms is necessary for efficient critical thinking. You can't just turn yourself into a Chinese Room of analysis.
A well designed test will freely give you an equation sheet or even allow a cheat sheet.
Certain questions are phrased to force the reader to pluck out and categorize bits of information, to implement complex iterations of simple formulae, and to perform long-form calculations accurately without regard to the formulae themselves.
But for elementary skills, you're often challenging the individual to retain basic facts and figures. Internalizing your multiplication tables can serve as a heuristic that's quicker than doing simple sums in your head. Knowing the basic physics formulae - your F = ma, ρ=m/V, f= V/λ etc - can give you a broader understanding of the physical world.
If all you know how to do is search for answers to basic questions, you're slowing down your ability to process new information and recognize patterns or predictive signals in a timely manner.
-
The same could be said about people who search for answers anywhere on the internet, or even the world, and don’t have some level of skepticism about their sources of information.
It’s more like, not having critical thinking skills perpetuates a lack of critical thinking skills.
-
When was the last time you did math without a calculator?
-
I think "deliberately suppressed" is different than lost.
-
-
Unless you suffer from ADHD with object permanence issues, then in that case you can go fuck yourself.
-
Something something.... Only phone number I remember is your mother's phone number (Implying that is for when I'm calling her to arrange a session of sexual intercourse, that she willingly and enthusiastically participates in).
-
No, he said Breath as a service, which is funny!
