📝 Research summary: AI's impact on our ability to think critically

Microsoft released a paper that suggests we're outsourcing more of our brainpower to AI when it comes to tasks we think it's good at. But isn't that the point?

The Understanders is slowly bouncing back after the flu and bronchitis completely took me out for a couple of weeks. Thanks for your patience!

A couple of weeks ago, a rare thing happened: research on how AI affects people broke through in the news. Given that the whole conceit of this newsletter is that there’s not enough of that type of thing present in the discourse about AI, this warmed my cold heart. The paper from Microsoft Research made for a compelling headline, as it suggests that use of generative AI may result in less critical thinking. That sounds not great. Let’s take a look at the approach the paper used and unpack the findings a bit.