Rudrajit Choudhuri

Rudrajit Choudhuri, Christopher Sanchez, Margaret Burnett et al.

Objectives: When students use generative AI in coursework, what are its persistent effects on their intellectual development? We investigate (RQ1-How) how students' trust in and routine use of genAI affect their cognitive engagement habits in STEM coursework, and (RQ2-Who) which students are particularly vulnerable to cognitive disengagement. Method: Drawing on dual-process, cognitive offloading, and automation bias theories, we developed a statistical model explaining how and to what extent students' trust-driven routine genAI use affected their cognitive engagement -- specifically, reflection, the need for understanding, and critical thinking in coursework, and how these effects differed across students' cognitive styles. We empirically evaluated this model using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling on survey data from 299 STEM students across five North American universities. Results: Students who trusted and routinely used genAI reported significantly lower cognitive engagement. Unexpectedly, students with higher technophilic motivations, risk tolerance, and computer self-efficacy -- traits often celebrated in STEM -- were more prone to these effects. Interestingly, students' prior experience with genAI or academia did not protect them from cognitively disengaging. Implications: Our findings suggest a potential cognitive debt cycle where routine genAI use weakens students' intellectual habits, potentially driving and escalating over-reliance. This poses challenges for curricula and genAI system design, requiring interventions that actively support cognitive engagement.

Rudrajit Choudhuri, Christian Bird, Carmen Badea et al.

Developers spend roughly one-tenth of their workday writing code, yet most AI tooling targets that fraction. This paper asks what should be built for the rest. We surveyed 860 Microsoft developers to understand where they want AI support, and where they want it to stay out. Using a human-in-the-loop, multi-model council-based thematic analysis, we identify 22 AI systems that developers want built across five task categories. For each, we describe the problem it solves, what makes it hard to build, and the constraints developers place on its behavior. Our findings point to a growing right-shift burden in AI-assisted development: developers wanted systems that embed quality signals earlier in their workflow to keep pace with accelerating code generation, while enforcing explicit authority scoping, provenance, uncertainty signaling, and least-privilege access throughout. This tension reveals a pattern we call "bounded delegation": developers wanted AI to absorb the assembly work surrounding their craft, never the craft itself. That boundary tracks where they locate professional identity, suggesting that the value of AI tooling may lie as much in where and how precisely it stops as in what it does.