
A new study from researchers in the US and the UK suggests that leaning on artificial intelligence, even for a short time, could hurt your ability to think and try hard on your own.
The findings come from a paper titled “AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance.” And the name pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
The researchers ran several experiments. In the first one, they asked 350 Americans to solve fraction problems. Half of the group could use a chatbot built on OpenAI’s GPT-5. The other half did the math by themselves.
But here is the twist. Halfway through the test, the researchers turned off the chatbot for the group that had been using it. Right after that, that group’s number of correct answers dropped sharply. Many people simply stopped answering questions at all.

The team then did the same test with 670 people and got nearly identical results. Then they switched from math to reading comprehension questions. The outcome was the same every time.
Researcher Rachit Dubey from the University of California helped run the study. He said the problem is not just that people give wrong answers after using AI. The bigger issue is that they lose the desire to even try.
Dubey also warned that putting AI into schools too quickly could create a generation of students who never discover their own abilities. He said that could end up hurting human creativity and new inventions down the road.
The study compares using AI to the old story about a frog in a pot of warm water. The water heats up slowly, so the frog does not notice until it is too late to jump out. The researchers say AI works the same way. It slowly wears down your motivation to keep working through hard problems. And by the time you notice the damage, it is very hard to fix.
Not everything in the study was bad. The researchers found that people who used the chatbot only for small hints or to get clarification did much better after the tool was removed. The real trouble came from people who asked the bot to just give them the final answers directly.
This article, Study finds too much reliance on AI reduces persistence and lowers performance of humans, was originally published at NoypiGeeks | Philippines Technology News, Reviews and How to's.
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