Learning with AI Assistance: A Path to Better Task Performance or Dependence?

With the proliferation of AI, there is a growing concern regarding individuals becoming overly reliant on AI, leading to a decrease in intrinsic skills and autonomy. Assistive AI frameworks, on the other hand, also have the potential to improve human learning and performance by providing personalized learning experiences and real-time feedback. To study these opposing viewpoints on the consequences of AI assistance, we conducted a behavioral experiment using a dynamic decision-making game to assess how AI assistance impacts user performance, skill transfer, and cognitive engagement in task execution. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions that featured AI assistance at different time-points during the task. Our results suggest that AI assistance can improve immediate task performance without inducing human skill degradation or carryover effects in human learning. This observation has important implications for AI assistive frameworks as it suggests that there are classes of tasks in which assistance can be provided without risking the autonomy of the user. We discuss the possible reasons for this set of effects and explore their implications for future research directives.