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[paper] Evidence of a social evaluation penalty for using AI
(www.pnas.org)
The association between AI use and laziness perceptions is dependent upon the evaluators’ own AI use, and perceptions of laziness can be offset for tasks in which AI is clearly useful.
This work demonstrated that the use of productivity-enhancing tools can, paradoxically, erode social evaluations of their operators’ competence and motivation.
I do remember calculators being referred to as a crutch in the context of learning mathematics because doing the work was part of learning. The expectation was that harder work would be suitable after learning how to do the work first, so you knew if the output matched what you intended to input. There has always been concerns about over reliance on automation of any type.
But AI is so unreliable that a calculator is not a good comparison. It often is being used as a crutch as well, since everyone who openly talks about using AI at my office seem to just copy/paste the output and don't do anything to clean up the incorrect parts. That is what gives the appearance of being lazy or less competent to those of us who see the downsides as outweighing the benefits. Those that are all in on AI sure do like patting each other on the back about using the hot new tools though!