Using Generative AI to Promote Critical Thinking: An Experiment

Abstract

Generative AI (GAI) has emerged as an important tool for education, but like all tools it has both positive and negative uses.  It can help students to understand class material better or give them different ideas and inspiration when completing assignments.  However, GAI can prevent students from developing their critical thinking skills when they use it to do their class work for them.  We constructed a pilot experiment in economics and political science classes to measure whether students used GAI or their own thoughts as the basis of their response to a few discussion questions.  We found that students who had to assess the GAI's answers used more critical thinking to make their arguments.  Yet when replying to the discussion question without an included GAI response, the students often reverted to using GAI to answer the question.