How AI Assistance Affects Human Skill Development: A Study of Learning with Logic Puzzles

2026-08-24

AI Summary

研究通过逻辑谜题实验探讨AI辅助对人类技能发展的影响，发现低成本AI辅助导致更多使用但长期削弱技能发展，使用贝叶斯潜在能力模型分析独立推理与技能增长的关系。

Abstract

While AI assistance can improve human task performance in the short term, it may also undermine the development of skills in the longer term. We examine this tension in a controlled logic-puzzle experiment involving on-demand AI assistance, where participants complete tasks before, during, and after AI is available. By experimentally varying AI request costs, we find that lower-cost assistance induces more frequent AI use. We also find that participants who request AI assistance during the AI-access phase perform worse at the task after assistance is removed, and their subsequent unassisted performance is overestimated when predicted from earlier AI-assisted performance. We use a Bayesian latent ability model to separate initial ability, post-AI ability, and participant-specific skill change, while estimating how independent reasoning during the AI-access phase relates to skill development. The results show that greater independent problem-solving effort is associated with larger gains in latent ability, consistent with the interpretation that skill development is weaker when AI assistance substitutes for independent reasoning.

Problem

• AI assistance
• human skill development
• logic puzzles
• independent reasoning

Innovation

• AI assistance
• skill development
• Bayesian latent ability model
• independent reasoning