Copilots! We're all using them. Whether it's summarising a meeting or offering writing suggestions, AI has undoubtedly brought numerous enhancements to a worker's daily workflow.
Yet amid all the talk of what else we can do with AI copilots, should we at any point be asking what should we keep it from doing?
This isn't just some philosophical musing about AI's use making humans redundant; these are the thoughts of Copilot maker Microsoft themselves.
Indeed, a recent Microsoft study says AI 'atrophies' critical thinking, and an overdependence on AI tools like Copilot negatively impacts people's critical thinking capabilities.
Examining Copilot's 'Mind-Numbing' Capabilities
AI and generative AI were billed as time savers; automators that would ideally tackle the necessary, but not value-added tasks like admin, that need to be completed alongside the day's work.
Yet, the study by Microsoft researchers in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University reveals that removing these daily tasks and taking over with automation is part of the detriment to a person's critical thinking.
"[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 study said.
To come to this conclusion, the study evaluated AI use cases at the workplace.
Recruiting 319 knowledge workers for the study, who self-reported 936 first-hand examples of using generative AI in their job, the researchers asked them to complete a survey about how they use generative AI (including what tools and prompts), how confident they are in 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 included 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".
The conclusion of the study was reached when findings revealed that the more employees confidently used AI at work, the more they observed a "perceived enaction of critical thinking".
Ironically, those less confident in their use of AI may actually be better at it. The study found that this group used more critical thinking and had more confidence in their ability to evaluate and improve the quality of the AI's output and mitigate the consequences of AI responses.
