- Only 3% of participants with access to artificial intelligence were willing to say “I don’t know”
- Participants could not adequately question AI-generated information
- “AI… eliminated participants’ willingness to suspend judgment”
A new study conducted by researchers from French and Italian universities argues that humans struggle to compete with artificial intelligence when it comes to critical thinking.
According to the data, participants with access to AI were less likely to say “I don’t know”, with only 3% unsure of an answer that required critical thinking compared to 44% of participants who did not have access to AI.
The study ultimately concludes that humans are too dependent on artificial intelligence to replace potentially correct personal judgments with incorrect AI suggestions.
Is AI harming our critical thinking?
The study intentionally used a model that has a lower accuracy to produce wrong results, and yet people still chose to use those results instead of thinking for themselves, giving a more correct answer or simply saying ‘I don’t know’.
However, despite this reliance on AI, the human participants still seemed to recognize that AI could be wrong. With small financial incentives to be more honest, several participants were less likely to follow the AI’s exact words.
“Across five experiments, mere access to AI advice nearly eliminated participants’ willingness to suspend judgment,” they wrote.
“As AI-generated responses become ubiquitous and increasingly unprompted, our findings show that the willingness to say ‘I don’t know’ may be among the first casualties of human-AI interaction.”
The paper also reveals a related paradox where people are more likely to feel confident in their answers with access to external information, be it AI-generated, even though it may not be correct or entirely relevant to their thought process.
Despite acknowledging many limitations and the small scope of this study, the researchers still call for additional AI skills and training when it comes to verifying output and reinforcing the importance of human critical thinking.
Via The register
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