alt Hacker NewsThe abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means.
Personally speaking, I find being able to ask ChatGPT continually more nuanced questions about an initial answer the one clear benefit over a Google search, where I have diminishing marginal returns on my inquisitiveness for the time invested over subsequent searches. The more precisely I am able to formulate my question on a traditional search engine, the harder it is for non-SEO optimized results to appear: it's either meant more for a casual reader with no new information, or is a very specialized resource that requires extensive professional background knowledge. LLMs really build that bridge to precisely the answers I want.
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> LLMs really build that bridge to precisely the answers I want.
It is interesting that you describe this as "the answers you want" and not "the correct answer to the question I have"
Not criticising you in particular, but this does sound to me like this approach has a good possibility of just reinforcing existing biases
In fact the approach sounds very similar to "find a wikipedia article and then go dig through the sources to find the original place that the answers I want were published"
This is my take as well.
There was a story a couple days ago about a neural network built on a single photonic chip. I fed the paper to ChatGPT and was able to use it to develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of what the chip actually delivered, how it operated, the fundamental operating principles of core components and how it could be integrated into a system.
The fact that I now have a tireless elucidator on tap to help explore a topic (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) actually increases my motivation to explore dense technical information and understanding of new concepts.
The one area where I do think it is detrimental is my willingness to start writing content on a provebial blank sheet of paper. I explore the topic with ChatGPT to get a rough outline, maybe some basic content and then take it from there.
Even though ChatGPT "invents" its own reality sometimes, I also find it superior to Google search results (or Duck Duck Go). In some cases LLM results even provide specific strings to search for in the search engines to verify the content. Search is terribly broken and has been since around 2014 (arbitrary date) where Google search results pages started displaying more ads than results.
>The abstract does not define, nor contextually suggest from the prior statements of the results what "metacognitive laziness" means.
Your comment seems like a good example of metacognitive laziness: not bothering to formulate your own definition from the examples in the abstract and the meaning of the words themselves. Slothful about the the process of thinking for yourself.
In that context metacognitive process are the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performances.
So metacognitive lazyness would be the lack of such processes
Further down they write (emphasis mine):
> When using AI in learning, learners should focus on deepening their understanding of knowledge and actively engage in metacognitive processes such as evaluation, monitoring, and orientation, rather than blindly following ChatGPT's feedback solely to complete tasks efficiently.
In the absence of a definition I'd read it straightforwardly - it means that someone stops making an effort to learn better ways to learn. I.e. if they start using chatbots to learn, they stop practicing other methods and just rely on the chatbot. (EDIT: I realize now that this probably isn't news to the parent!)
I've heard stories of junior engineers falling into this trap. They asked the chatbot everything rather than exposing their lack of knowledge to their coworkers. And if the chatbot avoids blatant mistakes, junior engineers won't recognize when the bot makes a subtle one.