AI 越聪明,人类越不会思考?

How much should managers let AI do the thinking?

管理者应该把多少思考任务外包给AI？

Calculators didn't make everyone innumerate.

计算器没有让所有人都不会算数。

GPS navigation systems made driving easier.

GPS导航系统让驾驶变得更轻松。

In any conversation about the cognitive effects of artificial intelligence, these two earlier technologies are reasonably likely to come up.

在任何关于AI影响认知的讨论中，这两项早期技术都很可能会被提及。

Each is a useful entry-point into two big questions.

每一项都是对于两个大问题的有用切入点。

How might AI change the way people think, and should managers do anything in response?

这两个大问题就是AI可能会如何改变人们的思维？管理者是否应该采取应对措施？

Using calculators and GPS devices are examples of "cognitive offloading"-a deliberate decision to delegate a specific task to technology.

使用计算器和导航设备是“认知卸载”的例子，即刻意决定将某项具体任务委托给科技。

In both cases, it has been worth it.

在这两种情况下，认知卸载都是值得的。

Calculators improve students' mathematical performance, helping to build problem-solving skills and self-confidence.

计算器能提高学生的数学成绩，有助于培养解决问题的能力和自信心。

GPS means drivers no longer have to pull over and faff about with maps.

导航设备意味着司机不再需要靠边停车，并手忙脚乱地翻看地图。

It's harder to get completely lost; it's easier to avoid terrible traffic.

现在很难完全迷路，避开拥堵的交通也更容易。

But there are costs, too.

但是这也需要付出代价。

In a 2019 paper, Mark LaCour of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and his co-authors deliberately programmed calculators to give a group of undergraduates the wrong answers to certain problems.

在2019年的一篇论文中，路易斯安那大学拉斐特分校的马克·拉库尔及其合著者刻意给计算器编程，让一组本科生在某些问题上得到错误的回答。

In general they found that there was very little suspicion of slightly inaccurate calculations.

一般来说，他们发现这些本科生们对略微不准确的计算结果几乎没有什么怀疑。

Even when answers were patently absurd, some people seemed to accept them without question.

即使回答明显错得离谱，有些人似乎也毫不犹豫地接受了。

The use of GPS navigation devices can also sap people's ability to think for themselves.

导航设备的使用也会削弱人们独立思考的能力。

A study conducted by Louisa Dahmani of Harvard Medical School and Véronique Bohbot of McGill University found that greater lifetime use of GPS by drivers was associated with worse spatial memory.

哈佛医学院的路易莎·达赫马尼和麦吉尔大学的维罗妮克·博博特进行的一项研究发现，司机一生中使用导航设备越多，空间记忆就越差。

Other research shows that pedestrians who navigate with their phones take longer routes and make more stops than physical-map users.

其他研究表明，与使用纸质地图的人相比，用手机导航的行人会走更长的路线，停留次数也更多。

A similar pattern is also visible in online search.

类似的模式在网络搜索中也很明显。

Using the internet to look up information is clearly efficient, but there are trade-offs.

用互联网查找信息显然效率很高，但是有利有弊。

The "Google effect" refers to a research finding that people have worse recall of information they expect to be able to find online.

“谷歌效应”指的是一项研究发现，即对于那些人们认为可以在网上找到的信息，人们记住这些信息的能力更差。

AI supercharges these trade-offs.

AI极大地强化了这些利弊。

Handing specific tasks to models will often make sense: they are much better than humans at many things.

将特定任务交给AI模型处理通常是合理的：AI比人类更擅长做很多事。

But AI's range of capabilities, allied to a convenient conversational interface and a seductively confident persona, raises the prospect less of delegation than of wholesale capitulation.

但是AI的能力范围之广，再加上便捷的对话界面和极具诱惑力的自信形象，更有可能让人们全面投降而非仅仅把任务委托给AI。

Hence "cognitive surrender", a term coined by Steven Shaw of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in a recent paper written with his colleague, Gideon Nave.

于是有了“认知投降”这个新词，由宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的史蒂文·肖在与同事吉迪恩·纳夫合著的一篇近期论文中创造。

Messrs Shaw and Nave asked volunteers to answer demanding questions with the assistance of AI, and a little like Mr LaCour's calculator experiment, randomly introduced errors into the machine's answers.

肖和纳夫让志愿者在AI的帮助下回答一些高难度问题，与拉库尔的计算器实验类似，他们让AI提供的回答随机出现错误。

When the model gave accurate responses, the people using it outperformed a control group of people relying on their own brainpower.

当AI模型给出准确回答时，AI使用者的表现优于依赖自身脑力的对照组。

When the AI gave the wrong answers, the people using it did much worse than the control group.

当AI给出错误回答时，AI使用者的表现比对照组差得多。

In other words, people stopped thinking for themselves.

换句话说，人们停止了独立思考。

At the moment bosses are more focused on getting employees to use AI than fussing about its effects on how they think.

目前，老板们更关注的是让员工使用AI，而不是纠结于AI对员工思维方式的影响。

But most employers also value critical thinking: models are still prone to embarrassing errors, for one thing, and novel situations require skilled humans to step in.

但是大多数雇主也重视批判性思维：一方面，AI模型仍然容易出现令人尴尬的错误，而且新情况需要熟练的人类介入。

So it is worth asking what managers can do to encourage cognitive resistance.

因此值得探讨的是，管理者可以做些什么来鼓励认知抵抗。

They can deliberately hire workers who enjoy thinking.

管理者可以刻意雇佣喜欢思考的员工。

People with high "need for cognition" (yes, dear listener, that means you) are somewhat, though not entirely, protected against the risk of cognitive surrender, says Mr Shaw.

肖说，具有高“认知需求”的人（是的，亲爱的听众，说的就是您）在某种程度上（尽管不是完全）不会有认知投降的风险。

Incentives and feedback can help, too.

激励和反馈也能有所帮助。

One of the experiments in his paper introduced monetary rewards for getting things right, and also notified participants during the test whether an item had been answered correctly or not.

在肖的论文中，有一项实验引入了答对问题就有金钱奖励的机制，并在测试过程中通知参与者，每个问题是否回答正确。

These techniques encouraged AI users who were being fed the wrong answers to override the model more (though they still did worse than people who relied on their own judgment).

这些机制鼓励那些得到错误回答的AI使用者更多地否决AI的回答（尽管他们的表现仍然比依赖自己判断的人差）。

Engineering AI-free periods may have value, too.

设计“无AI时段”可能也有价值。

Another recent study, by Stefanos Poulidis of INSEAD and his co-authors, recruited over 200 chess-club students to train on an AI-assisted platform.

另一项最近的研究由欧洲工商管理学院的斯蒂芬诺·普利迪及其合著者进行，招募了200多名国际象棋俱乐部学生，在AI辅助平台上进行训练。

Some of the students were automatically given AI tips at a limited number of specific moments; others could click a button at any time to get advice.

一些学生在数量有限的特定时刻有自动AI提示，其他学生则可以随时点击按钮获取提示。

The students who had on-demand access achieved less than half the performance gains of those who had no say over when they got help.

可以随时获取提示的学生，其表现提升幅度不到那些无法自主选择何时获得帮助的学生的一半。

Offloading is fine.

认知卸载无可厚非。

Giving up is another matter.

但是放弃思考则是另一回事。

内容来源：每日英语听力

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