The author reflects on a previous New Yorker essay exploring how college students utilize AI tools like ChatGPT for writing. Rather than merely substituting for their writing efforts, students engage in dialogues with AI to ease cognitive strain, making the writing process more enjoyable. This perspective aligns with a recent MIT Media Lab study showing that students writing without AI exhibited stronger brain activity associated with deeper cognitive processing compared to those aided by AI. While cognitive offloading can enhance efficiency in contexts like professional communication, it raises concerns in academia. Over-reliance on AI for writing tasks may impair students’ abilities to absorb and retain knowledge, fostering “metacognitive laziness.” The author warns that minimizing cognitive strain in educational settings could hinder meaningful learning and intellectual growth, akin to using shortcuts that resist the deeper conditioning crucial for long-term skill development. This tension underscores the broader implications of AI on human thought and learning.
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