Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / Critical Thinking vs. Cognitive Debt
Transcript
- 0:01SPEAKER_03: Hi, and welcome to Azadeh and Guy on AI.
- 0:05SPEAKER_03: And today we have two topics.
- 0:07We want to talk about the research paper that kind of raised
- 0:11our curiosity.
- 0:12SPEAKER_03: And it is a brand new paper from 2026.
- 0:17And one of the things that I find challenging right now is just
- 0:21staying up with the
- 0:22SPEAKER_03: literature and with the development of AI.
- 0:24SPEAKER_02: Exactly, yes.
- 0:25SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
- 0:25And so one of the things that I think we can help is by sharing
- 0:29some of the
- 0:30research that is out there that we think is very strong and
- 0:34talk through it.
- 0:36SPEAKER_03: And then you know something that you didn't know before.
- 0:39SPEAKER_03: It's impossible to chase all the literature, by the way.
- 0:42SPEAKER_03: It is exploding just like AIs.
- 0:45SPEAKER_03: And so that's very exciting.
- 0:46SPEAKER_03: All right.
- 0:47SPEAKER_03: And this paper is called...
- 0:49SPEAKER_02: The effects of critical thinking intervention on reliance behaviors,
- 0:54problem solving quality and creativity during human-gen AI
- 0:58collaborative learning.
- 1:00SPEAKER_03: And it is done by a group from Singapore led by... Chen Yu Hu.
- 1:09SPEAKER_03: And we hope you pronounce it correctly, but if not, it's my fault.
- 1:13SPEAKER_03: She was really trying to find out how it's pronounced.
- 1:16SPEAKER_03: And colleagues.
- 1:18And a lot of this research is really produced by research
- 1:22groups,
- 1:22and we applaud that.
- 1:23SPEAKER_03: We work in research groups as well,
- 1:25SPEAKER_03: and it's in a highly productive way,
- 1:27SPEAKER_03: especially when you need to move quickly with the way AI is developing.
- 1:33SPEAKER_03: So we salute them.
- 1:37I find this really interesting because it's trying to answer
- 1:41the question that we
- 1:42all have on our mind is that idea from the famous paper that
- 1:46has yet to be
- 1:46SPEAKER_03: published about cognitive debt.
- 1:49SPEAKER_03: And that is,
- 1:50how do we prevent students from just relying blindly on AI and
- 1:54not doing any
- 1:55SPEAKER_03: critical thinking?
- 1:56Yeah,
- 1:56the other good thing about their research is that they did an
- 1:59intervention.
- 2:03I'm not saying that survey designs are bad,
- 2:06but doing an intervention is very powerful.
- 2:09SPEAKER_03: It moves us quicker.
- 2:11It moves us forward much quicker,
- 2:13especially when it's well-designed and well-powered.
- 2:16SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
- 2:17SPEAKER_03: And it seems like they've done both.
- 2:18SPEAKER_03: That is,
- 2:19SPEAKER_03: there's good documentation of the intervention itself,
- 2:21SPEAKER_03: which is incredibly important because without the good documentation,
- 2:26SPEAKER_03: you cannot follow and say, hey, this is a good idea.
- 2:30SPEAKER_03: I want to try it again.
- 2:31And it is well powered because in each condition they had over
- 2:35100 participants,
- 2:36which means that you have enough power to discover even
- 2:40relatively medium,
- 2:42SPEAKER_03: even maybe small effects on the large effect size.
- 2:46SPEAKER_03: And if it's any smaller than that,
- 2:48SPEAKER_03: then maybe you don't want to discover them because,
- 2:50SPEAKER_03: yeah,
- 2:50SPEAKER_03: you can power it up to a thousand people per
- 2:53SPEAKER_03: And then anything becomes significant.
- 2:56SPEAKER_03: But you want to be able to detect meaningful differences,
- 2:59SPEAKER_03: especially when the intervention time is not very long,
- 3:02SPEAKER_03: which is this case.
- 3:04SPEAKER_02: They had over 200 undergraduate students as their participants.
- 3:09And they were first and second year students enrolled in the
- 3:13university in 2023 or 2024.
- 3:17SPEAKER_02: So basically they started when Gen AI had emerged at that time.
- 3:22SPEAKER_03: And this is important that it's coming from Singapore and a technological
- 3:27SPEAKER_03: university because Singapore has made AI one of its goals.
- 3:32And there's a lot of emphasis both in public in general,
- 3:37but definitely in research.
- 3:40SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
- 3:40SPEAKER_03: And so what did they do in the intervention itself?
- 3:45SPEAKER_02: So like many interventions,
- 3:48SPEAKER_02: they divided their participants into an experimental and a control group.
- 3:53SPEAKER_02: And I think the number of participants in each group was almost similar.
- 3:58SPEAKER_02: So for control group,
- 4:03they were allowed to use AI freely without having any
- 4:07constraints or without having
- 4:09SPEAKER_02: any instructions about how to use AI.
- 4:12SPEAKER_02: But the other group, intervention group,
- 4:14SPEAKER_02: They were provided with three specific instructional scaffolds,
- 4:19SPEAKER_02: and they were designed to promote critical thinking.
- 4:21SPEAKER_02: So one of them was authentic instruction.
- 4:24Students completed a pre-task exercise to identify potential
- 4:28biases in AI-generated content.
- 4:31SPEAKER_02: The other scaffold was mentoring.
- 4:33So groups were supported by a customized GPT-based peer tutor
- 4:38that provided
- 4:39SPEAKER_02: adaptive feedback,
- 4:40SPEAKER_02: monitored their progress,
- 4:41SPEAKER_02: and promoted critical thinking through Socratic questioning.
- 4:45SPEAKER_02: And last one was dialogue or role play.
- 4:48So the students were assigned a specific stakeholder roles like
- 4:53administrator,
- 4:54SPEAKER_02: instructor,
- 4:54SPEAKER_02: or student to evaluate the ethical and pedagogical issues from multiple
- 5:00SPEAKER_02: perspectives.
- 5:01SPEAKER_03: And for data collection, they had two layers of data collection.
- 5:06SPEAKER_03: One is on the individual level, they had survey.
- 5:09SPEAKER_03: So they're still using survey to measure some effects,
- 5:12which is important because then you can get fairly efficient
- 5:15information from 226
- 5:15SPEAKER_03: students,
- 5:15SPEAKER_03: which is hard to do any other way.
- 5:23SPEAKER_03: They used those to measure trust in AI,
- 5:26SPEAKER_03: perceived critical thinking,
- 5:30SPEAKER_03: using actually a subscale that is very common,
- 5:32SPEAKER_03: the MSLQ,
- 5:35which is a great instrument that has been validated multiple
- 5:38times and being used
- 5:39SPEAKER_03: here a little bit differently.
- 5:40SPEAKER_03: And the AI reliance behavior,
- 5:42SPEAKER_03: so whether the mean reflection,
- 5:45SPEAKER_03: the reflective,
- 5:45SPEAKER_03: cautious,
- 5:46SPEAKER_03: collaborative,
- 5:48SPEAKER_03: or thoughtless.
- 5:49And so the idea is how much are they interacting and how much
- 5:53they are just relegating.
- 5:54So back to that idea of cognitive debt,
- 5:57I'm just letting the AI do everything.
- 5:59SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
- 6:02SPEAKER_02: So how about the results?
- 6:05SPEAKER_03: So before the results,
- 6:07they used a number of different procedures for the different
- 6:11pieces of data.
- 6:12SPEAKER_03: So they used regression analysis for the surveys.
- 6:15SPEAKER_03: They used content analysis to look at those joint discussions.
- 6:23SPEAKER_03: So the group level had problem solving problems.
- 6:27SPEAKER_03: And they did it in groups.
- 6:31SPEAKER_03: And so there aren't 200 and something.
- 6:33There are 38 problem solving reports and 28 chat histories that
- 6:39help show exactly
- 6:41SPEAKER_03: how they used this specific GPT.
- 6:45SPEAKER_02: They also used creativity assessment.
- 6:48So the creativity of the group reports was measured using a
- 6:52hybrid approach.
- 6:53Computational text mining tools assessed semantic originality
- 6:58and idea density,
- 7:00SPEAKER_02: while human writers evaluated the novelty of the ideas and the writing.
- 7:04And I love this multifaceted approach because we are seeing
- 7:09these people who are
- 7:10SPEAKER_03: interested in AI are also using AI in research,
- 7:14SPEAKER_03: but not exclusively.
- 7:15They're leaving the human in the loop as part and actually in
- 7:21this case orthogonal.
- 7:22So they're not supervising as much as they are just providing
- 7:27more information.
- 7:28SPEAKER_02: And also AI adoption rates.
- 7:31So the researchers calculated the cosine similarity between the
- 7:37final group reports
- 7:38SPEAKER_02: and the AI chat transcripts.
- 7:40SPEAKER_03: So what you want is as much difference as possible.
- 7:43SPEAKER_03: So you're using it, but you're not overly relying to it.
- 7:46SPEAKER_03: So a perfect difference.
- 7:48a perfect correlation between the chat result and the paper
- 7:52that was finally the
- 7:53SPEAKER_03: final report would mean there's no humanly original text.
- 7:58SPEAKER_03: And I love the use of AI in this case as well,
- 8:01SPEAKER_03: because it allows you not to focus on the words themselves,
- 8:04SPEAKER_03: which would be a primitive way to do that,
- 8:06but actually about ID units and how much correlation there is
- 8:10between the ideas.
- 8:11SPEAKER_03: So this is really if you want the details,
- 8:14I think it's worth reading because there are methods here that
- 8:19if you're interested
- 8:20in doing that kind of research or interested in the nitty
- 8:23gritty of research,
- 8:24SPEAKER_03: which I personally love,
- 8:26SPEAKER_03: this is something to go back to and see how exactly they've done it.
- 8:31SPEAKER_03: So let's see what they found.
- 8:32SPEAKER_03: What did they find about creativity?
- 8:35So the first finding goes back to the survey that they
- 8:38administered and they
- 8:41believe that there was not a lot of difference between the
- 8:44experimental and control
- 8:45SPEAKER_02: group.
- 8:46SPEAKER_02: And they had explanation for that, right?
- 8:48SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
- 8:49SPEAKER_03: they at least speculated that the intervention,
- 8:52SPEAKER_03: because really they spent about two hours with students.
- 8:55SPEAKER_03: Two hours is not a very long time.
- 8:57SPEAKER_03: And so what they are saying,
- 8:58SPEAKER_03: and I think we're sensing it from our research as well,
- 9:01SPEAKER_03: is that even one or two training sessions are not enough.
- 9:05SPEAKER_03: We need to be repeatedly there.
- 9:08SPEAKER_03: We, for example, are writing a grant right now.
- 9:10And one of the things that I want to make sure we're doing is
- 9:13we need to revisit on
- 9:15SPEAKER_03: a monthly basis what
- 9:16for about two years before we think we will have real impact on
- 9:21the way people use AI.
- 9:23SPEAKER_03: I don't know exactly how much.
- 9:25And that's one of the things that I'm excited if we get funded
- 9:28to go and measure is
- 9:31SPEAKER_03: when is enough enough,
- 9:32SPEAKER_03: right?
- 9:32SPEAKER_03: When will we see a significant uptick that is consistently used?
- 9:37SPEAKER_03: So that's something that I'm excited about.
- 9:39SPEAKER_03: But two hours is definitely on the low end.
- 9:42SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
- 9:43SPEAKER_02: The other finding is about the shift in students' behaviors.
- 9:47SPEAKER_02: So survey is a kind of self-report measure.
- 9:52And they said that they didn't feel different,
- 9:54but their behavior absolutely changed.
- 9:57SPEAKER_02: And the intervention group engaged in less thoughtless use of AI.
- 10:01SPEAKER_02: They used AI more thoughtfully.
- 10:03SPEAKER_03: Yes.
- 10:03SPEAKER_03: So for example, and they showed a lot more semantic originality.
- 10:08SPEAKER_03: So that's again,
- 10:09going back to that idea of how different are they from their
- 10:13original text and ID
- 10:16SPEAKER_03: density was higher for the experimental group.
- 10:22SPEAKER_03: And that's, that's important.
- 10:24SPEAKER_03: And there were multiple measures of that.
- 10:26SPEAKER_03: Um,
- 10:29SPEAKER_03: Some of them more than others.
- 10:31SPEAKER_03: So that's that's really something that you need to look at the detail.
- 10:35SPEAKER_03: We're not going to talk about all of that here,
- 10:37SPEAKER_03: but definitely pick it up and look at it if you're interested.
- 10:40SPEAKER_03: And then the novelty scores,
- 10:44the human writers evaluated the novelty scores and the
- 10:47experimental group scored
- 10:50SPEAKER_03: significantly higher.
- 10:52SPEAKER_03: And remember, this is with a two-hour training.
- 10:54SPEAKER_03: This is the amazing thing.
- 10:56SPEAKER_03: We can see an impact almost immediately.
- 10:59SPEAKER_03: Now, these are products that are produced immediately.
- 11:01SPEAKER_03: And even in my class,
- 11:02SPEAKER_03: when we're using AI,
- 11:03SPEAKER_03: we see when we prompt them to use better prompts,
- 11:07SPEAKER_03: they do that.
- 11:08SPEAKER_03: And the result is better.
- 11:09SPEAKER_03: But the question is, is it sustained?
- 11:12SPEAKER_01: Is the real question.
- 11:13SPEAKER_03: And what we're seeing is...
- 11:14SPEAKER_03: Our students revert quickly to old bad practices,
- 11:18SPEAKER_03: short prompts without enough detail,
- 11:21SPEAKER_03: and then they're getting crap in return.
- 11:23SPEAKER_03: Crap, by the way, is an official research term.
- 11:28So human critical thinking is the essential ingredient for true
- 11:33innovation based on
- 11:35SPEAKER_02: what they found.
- 11:37SPEAKER_03: And really,
- 11:37the direct adaption of AI content was significantly lower in
- 11:41the experimental
- 11:42SPEAKER_03: group.
- 11:43So they were doing the hard work of working with the AI and not
- 11:47just saying,
- 11:48SPEAKER_03: well,
- 11:48SPEAKER_03: the AI has solved it.
- 11:49SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
- 11:50SPEAKER_02: Accepting what it says, yes.
- 11:52SPEAKER_03: So that's what we learned from this research study.
- 11:55SPEAKER_03: Please pick it up.
- 11:57SPEAKER_03: Computers and Education is a great journal.
- 12:00SPEAKER_03: Lots of things about AI.
- 12:01SPEAKER_03: It's one of the places I like going to.
- 12:03SPEAKER_03: I review for them.
- 12:04SPEAKER_03: So please, if you want to stay up to date, this is one of the places.
- 12:12SPEAKER_03: All right.
- 12:12SPEAKER_03: Do we want to delve into the second delve, by the way, as an AI word?
- 12:16SPEAKER_03: That's why I used it.
- 12:17SPEAKER_03: And do you want to delve into the second topic?
- 12:19SPEAKER_03: Because we have a bone of contention between us.
- 12:23SPEAKER_03: I have thoughts and Azadeh thinks I'm prematurely thinking them.
- 12:30SPEAKER_03: So I'll start because I had the thoughts.
- 12:33So I've been reading everything about AI and coding and I'm
- 12:41interested in coding
- 12:42SPEAKER_03: just because,
- 12:43SPEAKER_03: well,
- 12:43SPEAKER_03: I'm interested in computer science.
- 12:45SPEAKER_02: You have been vibe coding for a while, right?
- 12:46SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
- 12:46SPEAKER_03: and I've been vibe coding for a while with Claude,
- 12:49SPEAKER_03: co-work,
- 12:50SPEAKER_03: love it,
- 12:52SPEAKER_03: wrote about it on Substack and other places.
- 12:55SPEAKER_03: It's delightful.
- 12:56SPEAKER_01: But...
- 12:58SPEAKER_03: I'm also thinking,
- 12:59SPEAKER_03: and this is not an original thought,
- 13:01SPEAKER_03: this is a thought that others have had,
- 13:03is whatever is happening in coding right now may be what is
- 13:08going to happen to
- 13:10SPEAKER_03: either,
- 13:10SPEAKER_03: to the next wave of information-based professions.
- 13:17So whatever's happening in coding now will come eventually to
- 13:21other jobs in the market.
- 13:23SPEAKER_03: Now, this is a big proposition.
- 13:25SPEAKER_03: This is the leap of faith you've got to take.
- 13:28SPEAKER_03: So if you're saying,
- 13:29SPEAKER_03: no,
- 13:29SPEAKER_03: this is going to stop at the coding door and not go anywhere else,
- 13:34SPEAKER_03: then I will be wrong.
- 13:36SPEAKER_02: I completely agree.
- 13:37SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 13:37SPEAKER_02: That I'm going to be wrong.
- 13:40No.
- 13:40You can,
- 13:41because we started having that argument and I said,
- 13:44let's save it for the podcast.
- 13:46SPEAKER_03: So I think that one of the places that we might see it is in research,
- 13:53SPEAKER_03: because right now we have researchers,
- 13:55we have different ranking of universities and we have research
- 13:58heavy universities
- 13:59SPEAKER_03: and research light universities.
- 14:01SPEAKER_03: And I,
- 14:02SPEAKER_03: If this same cycle,
- 14:04SPEAKER_03: because the cycle,
- 14:05SPEAKER_03: and I didn't explain what the cycle is,
- 14:06SPEAKER_03: but we've had AI produce code for a while now.
- 14:11SPEAKER_03: For the last year,
- 14:12SPEAKER_03: year and a half,
- 14:13a growing percentage of the coding that is done in the world is
- 14:18done by AI.
- 14:19SPEAKER_03: There are multiple platforms that do this well,
- 14:22SPEAKER_03: whether it's lovable or code code,
- 14:25SPEAKER_03: a cloud code or whatever.
- 14:29SPEAKER_03: They're everywhere.
- 14:32SPEAKER_03: And they have been doing that.
- 14:34SPEAKER_03: And humans have been verifying them.
- 14:36And that has become a bottleneck because AI can produce a lot
- 14:40more code than people can check.
- 14:42And lately,
- 14:43Claude and others have been producing agents that can check the
- 14:47code.
- 14:48SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 14:49SPEAKER_03: If that becomes good, then the human is out of the loop.
- 14:53The human just generates idea and goes to have a cup of coffee
- 14:58and has a working
- 15:00prototype that keeps getting fixed because we have review
- 15:03agents that can look at
- 15:04SPEAKER_03: the code,
- 15:05SPEAKER_03: say what's working,
- 15:05SPEAKER_03: what's not working,
- 15:07SPEAKER_03: and fixes them.
- 15:07SPEAKER_03: Now, not even all coders believe it's possible.
- 15:11SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 15:12SPEAKER_03: But a growing number does.
- 15:14Now,
- 15:14we always have to separate because we're working with
- 15:17engineers,
- 15:18right?
- 15:18SPEAKER_03: And we've started talking about the main problem,
- 15:22SPEAKER_03: and that is that it threatens our professional ego,
- 15:28SPEAKER_03: right?
- 15:28SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 15:29SPEAKER_03: It goes to the heart of that.
- 15:30So when people say,
- 15:31no,
- 15:32it can't,
- 15:33I want to see empirical evidence,
- 15:34not your gut feeling.
- 15:36SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 15:36SPEAKER_03: Because my gut feeling is nobody can replace me.
- 15:40SPEAKER_03: I am the best whatever profession is.
- 15:43SPEAKER_03: And a machine can never beat me.
- 15:45SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 15:46SPEAKER_03: But maybe it can.
- 15:47SPEAKER_02: And if we take the ego out of it... That's where I'm not... Yeah.
- 15:52SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
- 15:53SPEAKER_02: Because we... Yeah.
- 15:54SPEAKER_03: Go ahead.
- 15:55SPEAKER_02: We have tried qualitative coding with AI before.
- 15:59SPEAKER_02: And to be honest, we were not 100% satisfied with the output.
- 16:03SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 16:04SPEAKER_02: So...
- 16:05SPEAKER_03: And so that is definitely true.
- 16:07So my suggestion is that research universities will do less and
- 16:11less research or
- 16:12there will be probably less research universities and less
- 16:16researchers because they
- 16:17SPEAKER_03: would be able to use AI,
- 16:20SPEAKER_03: an army of agents,
- 16:21SPEAKER_03: a swarm of agents.
- 16:23SPEAKER_02: So you mean there is no human in the loop?
- 16:25SPEAKER_02: AI is doing all... Almost all of the work.
- 16:28SPEAKER_03: Humans summarize it and serves it.
- 16:31SPEAKER_03: Kind of the next...
- 16:31SPEAKER_03: And I don't know how long that is,
- 16:33SPEAKER_03: but human has to generate some of the ideas.
- 16:36SPEAKER_03: We're not... We don't... I think that that is the portion.
- 16:40SPEAKER_03: But I think that we may get to the point where...
- 16:43SPEAKER_03: To produce research programs,
- 16:45we would need maybe one-tenth of the people producing research
- 16:48right now because
- 16:49right now the constraint is the speed of writing and the speed
- 16:55of data collection
- 16:58SPEAKER_03: and the speed of ideating.
- 17:00SPEAKER_03: Well,
- 17:01SPEAKER_03: you still need to ideate,
- 17:02but you have a machine that can help you do that faster and
- 17:06build a research
- 17:06SPEAKER_03: program out of it.
- 17:08And you can run experiments much faster depending on how you
- 17:11collect the data.
- 17:12SPEAKER_03: And so in writing,
- 17:14SPEAKER_03: I mean,
- 17:15SPEAKER_03: I know some people are attached to writing as thinking,
- 17:17SPEAKER_03: but there are sometimes,
- 17:18many times in science where I have concrete results and I just
- 17:23need to describe
- 17:24SPEAKER_03: them so somebody can build the next rung.
- 17:26SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 17:27SPEAKER_03: And that's where maybe there's a need for a human to do a little bit of
- 17:32SPEAKER_03: interpretation,
- 17:33SPEAKER_03: kind of cherry on top,
- 17:34SPEAKER_03: conclusions and expansions and what comes next.
- 17:37SPEAKER_03: But the majority of the work can be done, right?
- 17:40I mean,
- 17:41I think about how technical a method section is and a result
- 17:44section is.
- 17:45And even some of the discussion can be,
- 17:48here's what other researchers said.
- 17:50SPEAKER_03: This is what we added to the information.
- 17:52And I can see how that can become a cycle where I need a lot
- 17:58less researchers out there.
- 18:00SPEAKER_03: Now, universities also do teaching and service and other things.
- 18:03SPEAKER_03: So it's not like we will have nothing to do.
- 18:05SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 18:07SPEAKER_02: I'm still thinking about that.
- 18:10Especially,
- 18:10you suggested that we have a separate agent that reviews the
- 18:16code.
- 18:17SPEAKER_02: Yes.
- 18:17SPEAKER_02: But it can review the code from multiple perspectives.
- 18:21SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm talking about programming.
- 18:23SPEAKER_02: So for programming,
- 18:24SPEAKER_02: we are talking about memory management,
- 18:26SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
- 18:27SPEAKER_02: time management,
- 18:28SPEAKER_02: efficiency of the code.
- 18:30SPEAKER_02: So basically, the agent can come up with several different plans for
- 18:35SPEAKER_02: for improving the quality of the code.
- 18:37But who is going to decide which one is the best plan for that
- 18:41specific project?
- 18:43SPEAKER_03: Well, nobody is deciding.
- 18:45SPEAKER_03: The agents are deciding.
- 18:47SPEAKER_03: They're iterating.
- 18:48SPEAKER_03: They're trying that out in short increments.
- 18:51One of the things that has emerged fairly recently is very
- 18:55short incremental,
- 18:56SPEAKER_03: like evolution,
- 18:58SPEAKER_03: is you create the next version.
- 19:00SPEAKER_03: Is it performing better?
- 19:01SPEAKER_03: If it's not performing better, you go back to the beginning.
- 19:03SPEAKER_03: If it's performing better, you said it's good.
- 19:06SPEAKER_03: What is the next problem to solve?
- 19:07SPEAKER_03: So what it's taking is it's taking shorter pieces of the problem,
- 19:12SPEAKER_03: identifying them,
- 19:13SPEAKER_03: solving them.
- 19:15SPEAKER_03: Again,
- 19:16SPEAKER_03: if the output is improved,
- 19:20SPEAKER_03: whether you decide efficiency,
- 19:22SPEAKER_03: number of,
- 19:23SPEAKER_03: you know,
- 19:24SPEAKER_03: you can decide what the criteria are.
- 19:26And the one problem with that is that some things are really
- 19:31easy to quantify.
- 19:32So it's easy for an agent to decide if it's gotten better or
- 19:35not based on the correction.
- 19:37SPEAKER_03: In research, that's not always possible.
- 19:39SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 19:40So the more squishy the result is,
- 19:46the harder it is for AI to have a scale.
- 19:54SPEAKER_03: But I think it's possible.
- 19:55SPEAKER_03: And that's exactly where I have a soft belly here.
- 19:59SPEAKER_02: So maybe it's possible, but not in every single area of research.
- 20:03SPEAKER_02: For example...
- 20:05SPEAKER_02: If you're talking about it like this,
- 20:07SPEAKER_02: maybe in programming it could be easily applied,
- 20:09but maybe in other parts of the research when critical thinking
- 20:13and innovation
- 20:14SPEAKER_02: matters a lot.
- 20:16SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure about that.
- 20:18SPEAKER_03: So I don't know either.
- 20:20SPEAKER_03: And I think that...
- 20:23SPEAKER_03: We will have to develop some markers about how education,
- 20:27SPEAKER_03: how in our case,
- 20:28SPEAKER_03: educational research is done.
- 20:30SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 20:30SPEAKER_03: But we have concrete outcomes.
- 20:32SPEAKER_03: We can say, can kids do this better?
- 20:35SPEAKER_03: Right.
- 20:36SPEAKER_03: And does this design work or not work fairly efficiently?
- 20:40SPEAKER_03: And especially with our digital platforms,
- 20:42SPEAKER_03: building curriculum is definitely faster right around an idea.
- 20:46SPEAKER_03: And so I am I'm just wondering out loud.
- 20:50SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
- 20:50But I think that we might face a situation where our jobs at
- 20:56some universities,
- 20:57SPEAKER_03: not all universities,
- 20:58some universities will be those bastions of research and
- 21:02everybody in them will do
- 21:03SPEAKER_03: maybe even more research because they will be 10 times more productive.
- 21:07SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
- 21:08But in other places,
- 21:09the role may revert to let's teach everybody about AI.
- 21:14SPEAKER_03: Let's just teach our courses really, really well.
- 21:16SPEAKER_02: There's nothing wrong with that.
- 21:17SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 21:18SPEAKER_03: Right.
- 21:19SPEAKER_03: And we have not found the multiplier for education.
- 21:24SPEAKER_03: It may be that education is one of those places where AI can help people.
- 21:29SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
- 21:30SPEAKER_03: But at the edges.
- 21:31SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 21:32SPEAKER_03: But to this point,
- 21:34technology has helped the technology has not revolutionized
- 21:37education as far as the
- 21:39SPEAKER_03: need for people to do their job.
- 21:42SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 21:43SPEAKER_03: And so it may be that we come to that,
- 21:44SPEAKER_03: but that's actually a much less solvable problem,
- 21:47SPEAKER_03: I would argue,
- 21:48SPEAKER_03: than being able to have a research production.
- 21:52SPEAKER_03: Anyway, that's where my brain is.
- 21:55SPEAKER_03: Azadeh tells me, I'm full of it.
- 21:57SPEAKER_03: It's just premature.
- 21:59SPEAKER_03: But I'm trying to imagine the future as I think about,
- 22:02SPEAKER_03: for example,
- 22:03SPEAKER_03: as we're graduating people into the world,
- 22:06SPEAKER_03: what do I need to make sure that our doctoral students know?
- 22:10And I think knowing AI will be the only chance to be a
- 22:14researcher in this new world
- 22:16SPEAKER_03: and also to make sure that many of them know that
- 22:19SPEAKER_03: that they are much more likely to teach.
- 22:21SPEAKER_03: And that is true even now, but that very few of them will do research.
- 22:27And it might be that that pyramid gets much,
- 22:29much narrower because we can do so much with AI.
- 22:34SPEAKER_03: So I think that cycle may be coming sooner than later.
- 22:39I know that there are a number of labs that work exclusively on
- 22:43the idea of
- 22:44SPEAKER_03: creating AI that improves science.
- 22:45SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 22:47SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 22:49SPEAKER_03: All right.
- 22:52SPEAKER_03: I thought I would get more fire here.
- 22:53A little bit more pushback will be because I need to think
- 23:03through these things.
- 23:04SPEAKER_03: And I appreciate the pushback.
- 23:09SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 23:09SPEAKER_03: Until next time.
- 23:11SPEAKER_02: See you.
- 23:12SPEAKER_03: On Azadeh.
- 23:13SPEAKER_02: And Guy.
- 23:13SPEAKER_03: On AI.