A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.”

“[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise,” the researchers wrote. 

The researchers recruited 319 knowledge workers for the study, who self reported 936 first-hand examples of using generative AI in their job, and asked them to complete a survey about how they use generative AI (including what tools and prompts), how confident they are the generative AI tools’ ability to do the specific work task, how confident they are in evaluating the AI’s output, and how confident they are in their abilities in completing the same work task without the AI tool. Some tasks cited in the paper include a teacher using the AI image generator DALL-E to create images for a presentation about hand washing at school, a commodities trader using ChatGPT to “generate recommendations for new resources and strategies to explore to hone my trading skills,” and a nurse who “verified a ChatGPT-generated educational pamphlet for newly diagnosed diabetic patients.”