Learning with AI

ChatGPT and other LLM tend to disallow people to think and learn. My main concern is, if you use LLMs all the time, you run on auto pilot, and you tend to not learn and not think anymore (see more on Will AI replace Humans).

Here’s a study The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis by Jin Wang & Wenxiang Fan which tends to say otherwise:

• A large positive impact on improving learning performance (g = 0.867)
• A moderately positive impact on enhancing learning perception (g = 0.456)
• A moderately positive impact on fostering higher-order thinking (g = 0.457)

Rather than reducing thinking, the evidence suggests ChatGPT can actually enhance it when used appropriately.

The analysis shows that ChatGPT’s effectiveness in fostering higher-order thinking varies by:

1. Type of course - with the strongest impact in STEM-related courses
2. Role of ChatGPT - with the most significant impact when it functions as an “intelligent tutor”

This higher order thinking is something I could understand, if you deeply interested in something, you can actually learn more by asking ChatGPT. But if you always do it, I would argue that over a long time, your brain won’t learn to think/learn anymore. As we didn’t learn to remember phone numbers anymore, as we don’t train that anymore.

But the questions is: How long was the study applied too? Because I believe, the effect comes only true if you used LLMs for months and months, as your thining pattern changes, as we don’t train the muscle of learning/thinking anymore; but instead just type into ChatGPT.

The studies were categorized by duration as:

• Less than 1 week: 8 studies
• 1-4 weeks: 12 studies
• 4-8 weeks: 17 studies
• More than 8 weeks: 7 studies

The majority of studies (36 out of 44) were conducted for 8 weeks or less, with only 7 studies examining effects beyond 8 weeks. This is a limitation when considering potential long-term impacts on thinking patterns in my opinion.

when the usage period exceeds eight weeks, the positive effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance slightly declines

This is what I mean, that the prolonged use of ChatGPT can lead students to become overly reliant on the AI tool, and thus they may neglect to reinforce the knowledge they have learned.

Origin: Marcel Salathe on LinkedIn
References: Don’t use AI for everything, you stop thinking-learning AI Use
Created 2025-05-13