Researchers gave 1,222 people AI assistants, then took them away after 10 minutes. Performance crashed below the control group and people stopped trying. UCLA, MIT, Oxford, and Carnegie Mellon call it the "boiling frog" effect.
r/artificial
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Generative AI
A new study from UCLA, MIT, Oxford, and Carnegie Mellon gave 1,222 people AI assistants for cognitive tasks - then pulled the plug midway through. The results: - After ~10 minutes of AI-assisted problem solving, people who lost access to AI performed **worse** than those who never had it - They didn't just get wrong answers - they **stopped trying altogether** - The effect showed up across math AND reading comprehension - Ran 3 separate experiments (350 → 670 → full cohort). Same result every time.