Counting on AI to Solve Problems Makes Us More Likely to Struggle and Give Up, Study Suggests
Using Generative AI a few minutes to solve a complex math problem or write an email can be a quick and easy way to get the job done. But your critical thinking, creativity, and reasoning skills go unused if AI does all the work for you. This might have more of an effect than you think.
A recent preliminary study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Oxford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that participants who relied on AI to practice a task for just 10 minutes had difficulty completing that task without it, compared to those who never used AI for that in the first place.
The researchers said AI Chatbots can help with “reasoning-intensive tasks” like to study And brainstormingbut that relying on robots for these tasks could hinder our ability to perform these tasks on our own. There is a big difference between having a AI tool solve problems for you and use it for advice and clarification – or not at all.
The study raises lingering concerns about how the use of AI affects our ability to perform the same tasks without machine assistance. It’s one thing to have a tool like ChatGPT Or Claude provide advice or answer certain questions that point us toward a solution, but it’s another thing to basically have it accomplish our tasks.
Using AI to complete a school assignment before a deadline is not the same as letting it help you manage your time. The overuse of AI, particularly in workplaces And schoolscould prevent us, as humans, from doing things that we really should be able to do for ourselves.
Solve problems, with and without AI
The study included 1,200 US participants on the Prolific research platform and three experiments. The tests asked participants to solve fraction problems and answer SAT-style reading comprehension questions. Some people received the AI Assistant for help, and were able to use it however they wanted, but it was removed after 10 minutes. The study found that participants who used AI for help were more likely to give up on problems and perform worse than participants who didn’t.
Negative effects of AI use were observed only among those who used it to solve problems, not among those who did not use it during the study. Similar results were obtained in a MIT study last year, which focused on using AI to write essays.
Grace Liu, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the study’s authors, told CNET in an email that only short-term effects were measured and we don’t yet have a complete picture of long-term effects. “The significance of this large-scale and long-term effect requires more research,” Liu said. Although AI can be used differently depending on use cases, the study does not evaluate how AI tools are used.
The researchers also found that when participants who had used AI couldn’t use it, they didn’t feel as confident in their ability to solve problems.
“Not only do people become less successful at their tasks, but they also stop trying,” the researchers write. “If such effects accumulate over months and years of AI use, we could end up creating a generation of learners who have lost the disposition to struggle productively without technological support.”
Is AI so different from a calculator?
The study makes me wonder if using AI is similar to other problem-solving methods or shortcuts, like using a calculator to solve a math problem. One distinction is that generative AI can be used for almost anything, such as personal decisions, editing, and research with follow-up questions.
“The two phenomena certainly share similarities because they allow people to outsource cognitive tasks,” Liu said. “We think it is particularly important to study cognitive outsourcing to AI because AI can be used ubiquitously in many reasoning tasks, whereas previous tools are task specific.”
Should you let AI do the work for you?
The researchers said the findings raised questions about the effects of our persistence and reasoning when using AI every day.
“We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained use of AI, current AI systems – optimized only for short-term utility – risk eroding the human capabilities they are intended to support,” the researchers added.
Liu recommends exercising caution when using AI tools.
“Our findings suggest that we should be more intentional about how and when AI assistance is used and deployed – particularly in learning contexts,” she said. “This is not a reason to avoid AI, but it is a reason to design and use these tools carefully.”
