Learning by Chatting? Investigating the Impact of Generative AI on Information Seeking and Learning
For educators and designers of AI tools, this study reveals that offloading information seeking to generative AI can impair learning, highlighting risks to human cognition.
A field experiment compared ChatGPT vs Google Search for informal learning over 8 days, finding that ChatGPT users had worse learning outcomes, especially for higher-order critical learning, due to diminished agency, increased meta-cognitive load, and reduced exploration of knowledge space.
Generative AI (GenAI) tools offer increasing opportunities for augmenting human cognitive tasks. Among these tasks, information seeking is being rapidly reshaped by GenAI tools, with potentially profound implications for learning and knowledge acquisition. To investigate these implications, we conducted a between-subjects field experiment in which participants pursued informal learning by seeking information through either ChatGPT or Google Search over a span of 8 days. Using a daily diary protocol, we gathered in-situ data on their information-seeking processes. Our findings show that participants in the ChatGPT group experienced diminished agency in their information-seeking processes, as they offloaded much of the information selection to AI, and consequently experienced greater meta-cognitive load arising from this reduced sense of control. We further highlight two sources of distortion in information access when using ChatGPT: biases in ChatGPT outputs, particularly towards providing solution-oriented artifacts over principled knowledge; and systematic shifts in users' information-seeking behaviors, whereby the conversational and socially-oriented interaction paradigm of current GenAI tools may inadvertently reduce exploration of the broader knowledge space. As a result, on average, participants in the ChatGPT group had worse learning outcomes than those using Google, especially for higher-order critical learning. Our work suggests inherent tensions between offloading information seeking to AI and meaningful learning, and provides broader implications for understanding AI's risks to human cognition.