The Good Thing About Hard Things - Cal Newport by Study Hacks
At first, the ChatGPT group performed better, which is not surprising because LLMs are good at solving math problems. But then the researchers turned off the chatbot. Not only did the AI group’s accuracy fall below the control group, but many participants in the AI group gave up and started skipping questions altogether.
There was a time not so far in the distant past when this was not true, i.e. LLMs were not good at math stuff.
Anyway not the point of the article. It’s this:
What is new, however, is the jaw-dropping speed of these impacts. We’re accustomed to slow-moving techno-cognition trends such as the negative effects of ubiquitous smartphone usage, which took years to emerge in the data.
With chatbots, the negative impact is immediate. The high generated by side-stepping mental effort using LLMs is so compelling that, with only a short exposure, hard thinking quickly becomes intolerable.
