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Research from the University of Monterey warns that delegating problem-solving to ChatGPT may have a “catastrophic” impact on a person’s ability to make decisions for themselves.
The paper by Professor Umberto Leon-Dominguez, published in the American Psychology Association’s journal Neuropsychology, warns that the constant use of ChatGPT leads to “cognitive offloading,” a process where individuals become overly reliant on artificial intelligence to reduce cognitive demand needed for solving complex tasks.
“As a university professor, I design my activities as intellectual challenges to stimulate and train cognitive functions that are useful in the daily lives of my students, such as problem-solving and planning abilities,” Dominguez told PsyPost.
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“The emergence of a tool like ChatGPT raised concerns for me about its potential use by students to complete tasks, thereby preventing the stimulation of these cognitive functions,” he added.
Dominguez notes that cognitive offloading can be a beneficial mechanism because it can reduce cognitive load, which can then be redirected toward “more complex cognitions.” Calculators, computers, and Google are good examples of such cognitive “crutches.”
But these technologies only assist in solving the problem or provide information for the decision-making process. You still have to do some of the heavy lifting yourself.
“However, with technologies like ChatGPT, we face, for the first time in history, a technology capable of providing a complete plan, from start to finish,” Dominguez said.
He then went on to suggest that overreliance on AI for problem-solving weakens our brains the same way the lack of exercise weakens our muscles, eventually leading to atrophy.
“Just as one cannot become skillful at basketball without actually playing the game, the development of complex intellectual abilities requires active participation and cannot solely rely on technological assistance,” he concluded.
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