 |
|
|
|||||
When OpenAI released study mode in July 2025, the company touted ChatGPTs educational benefits. When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance, the companys vice president of education told reporters at the products launch. But any dedicated teacher would be right to wonder: Is this just marketing, or does scholarly research really support such claims? While generative AI tools are moving into classrooms at lightning speed, robust research on the question at hand hasnt moved nearly as fast. Some early studies have shown benefits for certain groups such as computer programming students and English language learners. And there have been a number of other optimistic studies on AI in education, such as one published in the journal Nature in May 2025 suggesting that chatbots may aid learning and higher-order thinking. But scholars in the field have pointed to significant methodological weaknesses in many of these research papers. Other studies have painted a grimmer picture, suggesting that AI may impair performance or cognitive abilities such as critical thinking skills. One paper showed that the more a student used ChatGPT while learning, the worse they did later on similar tasks when ChatGPT wasnt available. In other words, early research is only beginning to scratch the surface of how this technology will truly affect learning and cognition in the long run. Where else can we look for clues? As a cognitive psychologist who has studied how college students are using AI, I have found that my field offers valuable guidance for identifying when AI can be a brain booster and when it risks becoming a brain drain. Skill comes from effort Cognitive psychologists have argued that our thoughts and decisions are the result of two processing modes, commonly denoted as System 1 and System 2. The former is a system of pattern matching, intuition and habit. It is fast and automatic, requiring little conscious attention or cognitive effort. Many of our routine daily activitiesgetting dressed, making coffee and riding a bike to work or schoolfall into this category. System 2, on the other hand, is generally slow and deliberate, requiring more conscious attention and sometimes painful cognitive effort, but often yields more robust outputs. We need both of these systems, but gaining knowledge and mastering new skills depend heavily on System 2. Struggle, friction and mental effort are crucial to the cognitive work of learning, remembering and strengthening connections in the brain. Every time a confident cyclist gets on a bike, they rely on the hard-won pattern recognition in their System 1 that they previously built up through many hours of effortful System 2 work spent learning to ride. You dont get mastery and you cant chunk information efficiently for higher-level processing without first putting in the cognitive effort and strain. I tell my students the brain is a lot like a muscle: It takes genuine hard work to see gains. Without challenging that muscle, it wont grow bigger. What if a machine does the work for you? Now imagine a robot that accompanies you to the gym and lifts the weights for you, no strain needed on your part. Before long, your own muscles will have atrophied and youll become reliant on the robot at home even for simple tasks like moving a heavy box. AI, used poorlyto complete a quiz or write an essay, saylets students bypass the very thing they need to develop knowledge and skills. It takes away the mental workout. Using technology to effectively offload cognitive workouts can have a detrimental effect on learning and memory and can cause people to misread their own understanding or abilities, leading to what psychologists call metacognitive errors. Research has shown that habitually offloading car navigation to GPS may impair spatial memory and that using an external source like Google to answer questions makes people overconfident in their own personal knowledge and memory. Learning and mastery come from effort, whether thats done with a powerful chatbot or AI tutor or not, but educators and students need to resist outsourcing that work. Francesco Carta fotografo via Getty Images Are there similar risks when students hand off cognitive tasks to AI? One study found that students researching a topic using ChatGPT instead of a traditional web search had lower cognitive load during the taskthey didnt have to think as hardand produced worse reasoning about the topic they had researched. Surface-level use of AI may mean less cognitive burden in the moment, but this is akin to letting a robot do your gym workout for you. It ultimately leads to poorer thinking skills. In another study, students using AI to revise their essays scored higher than those revising without AI, often by simply copying and pasting sentences from ChatGPT. But these students showed no more actual knowledge gain or knowledge transfer than their peers who worked without it. The AI group also engaged in fewer rigorous System 2 thinking processes. The authors warn that such metacognitive laziness may prompt short-term performance improvements but also lead to the stagnation of long-term skills. Offloading can be useful once foundations are in place. But those fondations cant be formed unless your brain does the initial work necessary to encode, connect and understand the issues youre trying to master. Using AI to support learning Returning to the gym metaphor, it may be useful for students to think of AI as a personal trainer who can keep them on task by tracking and scaffolding learning and pushing them to work harder. AI has great potential as a scalable learning tool, an individualized tutor with a vast knowledge base that never sleeps. AI technology companies are seeking to design just that: the ultimate tutor. In addition to OpenAIs entry into education, in April 2025 Anthropic released its learning mode for Claude. These models are supposed to engage in Socratic dialogue, to pose questions and provide hints, rather than just giving the answers. Early research indicates AI tutors can be beneficial but introduce problems as well. For example, one study found high school students reviewing math with ChatGPT performed worse than students who didnt use AI. Some students used the base version and others a customized tutor version that gave hints without revealing answers. When students took an exam later without AI access, those whod used base ChatGPT did much worse than a group whod studied without AI, yet they didnt realize their performance was worse. Those whod studied with the tutor bot did no better than students whod reviewed without AI, but they mistakenly thought they had done better. So AI didnt help, and it introduced metacognitive errors. Even as tutor modes are refined and improved, students have to actively select that mode and, for now, also have to play along, deftly providing context and guiding the chatbot away from worthless, low-level questions or sycophancy. The latter issues may be fixed with better design, system prompts and custom interfaces. But the temptation of using default-mode AI to avoid hard work will continue to be a more fundamental and classic problem of teaching, course design and motivating students to avoid shortcuts that undermine their cognitive workout. As with other complex technologies such as smartphones, the internet or even writing itself, it will take more time for researchers to fully understand the true range of AIs effects on cognition and learning. In the end, the picture will likely be a nuanced one that depends heavily on context and use case. But what we know about learning tells us that deep knowledge and mastery of a skill will always require a genuine cognitive workoutwith or without AI. Brian W. Stone is an associate professor of cognitive psychology at Boise State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
The owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety sued Google on Friday, alleging the technology giant’s AI summaries use its journalism without consent and reduce traffic to its websites. The lawsuit by Penske Media in federal court in Washington, D.C., marks the first time a major U.S. publisher has taken Alphabet-owned Google to court over the AI-generated summaries that now appear on top of its search results. News organizations have for months said the new features, including Google’s “AI Overviews,” siphon traffic away from their sites, eroding advertising and subscription revenue. Penske, a family-owned media conglomerate led by Jay Penske and whose content attracts 120 million online visitors a month, said Google only includes publishers’ websites in its search results if it can also use their articles in AI summaries. Without the leverage, Google would have to pay publishers for the right to republish their work or use it to train its AI systems, the company said in the lawsuit. It added Google was able to impose such terms due to its search dominance, pointing to a federal court’s finding last year that the tech giant held a near 90% share of the U.S. search market. “We have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital mediaand preserve its integrity all of which is threatened by Google’s current actions,” Penske said. It alleged that about 20% of Google searches that link to its sites now show AI Overviews, a share it expects to rise, and added that its affiliate revenue has fallen by more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024 as search traffic declined. Online education company Chegg also sued Google in February, alleging that the search giant’s AI-generated overviews were eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete. Responding to Penske’s lawsuit, Google said on Saturday that AI overviews offer a better experience to users and send traffic to a wider variety of websites. With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims.” Google Spokesperson Jose Castaneda said. A judge handed the company a rare antitrust win earlier this month by ruling that it will not have to sell its Chrome browser as part of efforts to open up competition in search. The move disappointed some publishers and industry bodies, including the News/Media Alliance which has said the decision left publishers without the ability to opt out of AI overviews. “All of the elements being negotiated with every other AI company doesn’t apply to Google because they have the market power to not engage in those healthy practices,” Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing more than 2,200 U.S.-based publishers, told Reuters on Friday. “When you have the massive scale and market power that Google has, you are not obligated to abide by the same norms. That is the problem.” Coffey was referring to AI licensing deals firms such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have been signing with the likes of News Corp, Financial Times and The Atlantic. Google, whose Gemini chatbot competes with ChatGPT, has been slower to sign such deals. Additional reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham and Nilutpal Timsina Aditya Soni, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
China accused Nvidia on Monday of violating the country’s antimonopoly laws and said it would step up scrutiny of the world’s leading chipmaker, escalating tensions with Washington as the two countries hold trade talks this week.Chinese regulators said they would carry out “further investigation” into Nvidia after a preliminary investigation found that the company breached regulations when it made a years-old acquisition.The one-sentence statement from the State Administration for Market Regulation statement said the investigation centered on Nvidia’s purchase of network and data transmission company Mellanox Technologies.Nvidia didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.Regulators said last year that they were investigating the company for suspected violations stemming from the $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox that was completed in 2020.The decision ratchets up pressure on the U.S. as officials from Washington hold trade talks in Spain with Beijing’s representatives, and follows other moves by Beijing to increase scrutiny of the U.S. chip industry.On Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was carrying out an antidumping investigation into certain analog IC chips imported from the U.S., including commodity chips commonly made by companies such as Texas Instruments and ON Semiconductor.The ministry also announced a separate antidiscrimination probe into U.S. measures against China’s chip sector.In talks scheduled to run from Sunday to Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid for negotiations on tariffs and national security issues related to the ownership of social media platform TikTok.It’s the fourth round of discussions after meetings in London, Geneva and Stockholm. The two governments have agreed to several 90-day pauses on a series of increasing reciprocal tariffs, staving off an all-out trade war.Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor maker, has become central to the U.S.-China trade war, as the two sides battle for tech supremacy.The company has faced restrictions on chip exports to China imposed by President Joe Biden’s administration that were then reinforced by President Donald Trump. Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||