“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
RE: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/116011754710793421
For me, the jury is out on whether it’s a bad thing that novice workers using AI “compromise their own skill acquisition”.
I present to you a counter-example: when cars were invented, our society severely compromised our skill acquisition in horse-riding, but we can still get from place to place, and now we do it faster and safer than before.