Something Disturbing Happens When You "Learn" Something With ChatGPT

[highplainsdem]

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/learning-with-chatgpt-disturbing

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“When people rely on large language models to summarize information on a topic for them, they tend to develop shallower knowledge about it compared to learning through a standard Google search,” study co-lead author Shiri Melumad, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in an essay for The Conversation about her work.

The findings are based on an analysis of seven studies with more than 10,000 participants. The gist of their experiments went like this: the participants were told to learn about a topic, and were randomly assigned to either only use an AI chatbot like ChatGPT to do their research, or a standard search engine like Google. At the end, the participants were asked to write advice to a friend about what they learned.

A clear pattern emerged. The participants who used AI to do their research wrote shorter advice, with generic tips and less factual information, while the people who used a Google search produced more detailed and thoughtful tips. The pattern held even after controlling for factors like the information the users saw during their research by showing each group the same facts, or what tools they used.

“The findings confirmed that, even when holding the facts and platform constant, learning from synthesized LLM responses led to shallower knowledge compared to gathering, interpreting and synthesizing information for oneself via standard web links,” Melumad wrote.

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This new study was published in the journal PNAS Nexus: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/10/pgaf316/8303888

The essay one of the study's authors wrote: https://theconversation.com/learning-with-ai-falls-short-compared-to-old-fashioned-web-search-269760

Sadly, despite the study showing that using chatbots for research dumbed users down, the study's authors hope to find ways to make chatbots force their increasingly dumbed-down users to work a bit harder and thus learn a bit more.

The obvious solution is really the only smart one: Step away from the chatbot.