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Since the launch of ChatGPT more than two years ago, researchers have highlighted a growing number of drawbacks of generative artificial intelligence, including its negative effects on the environment, its tendency to make up responses whole cloth and its ability to be used to spread disinformation.
A pair of recent research studies — one of which was authored by researchers at a company that has, so far, invested billions in the nascent technology — indicate that the more people use AI tools and the more confidence and trust they place in those tools, the less likely they are to engage in critical thinking. The danger is not only that users won’t catch AI-generated errors, misinformation or the technology just telling them what they want to hear, but that they either won’t be developing those skills or they will see the skills they have deteriorate, analysts say. “It’s actually very difficult to use in the proper way, not to offload the thinking process and not to rely too much on it,” said Michael Gerlich, the author of one of the recent studies and a professor at SBS Swiss Business School in Zurich. “The more you rely on it, so the more it produces a positive result, the more you trust AI, and the more you trust AI, the more you offload the thinking process, so you let it think for you,” Gerlich said. The Icons for the smartphone apps DeepSeek and ChatGPT are seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025.lion’s share of the billions of dollars in venture fundingIn his study, published in January in the journal Societies, Gerlich surveyed 666 people in the United Kingdom. He queried them about their use of AI tools, the extent to which they engaged in so-called cognitive offloading by relying on other digital devices and services such as Google to remember things or help them solve problems, and the degree to which they scrutinized or evaluated the information they received from AI tools and elsewhere. Gerlich then followed up with in-depth interviews with 50 of the participants to learn more about their use of AI tools and the impact on their critical thinking.One of the limitations of Gerlich’s study is that it relied on participants to evaluate their own critical-thinking practices, rather than having a third party observe them or doing some kind of standard assessment. But when people evaluate themselves, they tend to paint themselves in a positive light, he said. Given that, participants — particularly those who frequently used AI tools — could have overstated the degree to which they engaged in critical thinking, he said.Even so, many of those interviewed for Gerlich’s study expressed concern about how their use of AI was affecting their thinking, according to his report. Many said they’d become dependent on such tools, using them for everyday tasks. Some worried their use of AI tools was reducing their opportunities to exercise their own judgment and thought, according to the report. “The more I use AI, the less I feel the need to problem-solve on my own,” one of Gerlich’s study participants said. “It’s like I’m losing my ability to think critically.” A younger participant in the survey noted how easy it is to find information using AI, but was concerned about the downside of that. “I sometimes worry that I’m not really learning or retaining anything,” they said. “I rely so much on AI that I don’t think I’d know how to solve certain problems without it.” Under Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has been one of the biggest supporters of generative AI to date. The software giant invested in OpenAI early on, thenThe other study, conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft and set to be presented at an Association of Computing Machinery conference in Japan later this month, raised similar concerns. It found that the more people — even those employed in jobs that require honed critical thinking skills — trust generative AI systems, the Microsoft has been one of the biggest supporters of generative AI to date. The software giant invested in OpenAI early on, thensoon after it launched ChatGPT. Microsoft has incorporated generative AI into its Bing search results and its Office software suite, and it offers access to OpenAI’s models to customers of its Azure cloud-computing services. For their study, the Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft researchers surveyed 319 so-called knowledge workers — people who work in careers in which analysis and problem solving are integral to their jobs. The survey consisted of a mix of open-ended and multiple-choice questions, as well as ones for which they could select more than one answer or were asked to rate things on a scale. The questions asked participants about their use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Claude from San Francisco’s OpenAI and Anthropic, respectively. It asked them what tools they used, how they used those tools, the extent to which they applied critical thinking while using generative AI and how they used critical thinking. It also asked them to evaluate how much they trust or rely on such tools. In analyzing participants’ responses, the researchers divvied up critical-thinking tasks into six categories — the acquisition of knowledge, comprehension, application of knowledge to solve problems, analysis, synthesizing information to form something new, and evaluation. The study found that the more confident participants were in AI’s outputs, the less likely they were to not only engage in critical thinking overall, but also in everything but comprehension. Many of those surveyed said they just generally trust the generative AI tools they use, according to the researchers’ report. One participant who uses ChatGPT said they used it to make their writing sound professional. “It’s a simple task, and I knew ChatGPT could do it without difficulty, so I just never thought about it, as critical thinking didn’t feel relevant,” the participant said in the survey. But others said they weren’t applying critical thinking, such as by evaluating what the generative AI tools produced, because they were short for time or doing so was someone else’s job. “In sales, I must reach a certain quota daily or risk losing my job,” said one participant. “Ergo, I use AI to save time and don’t have much room to ponder over the result.” Others told the researchers they simply didn’t know enough to evaluate whether the answers they got from generative AI were accurate or how to polish them. One participant’s colleagues criticized a document ChatGPT helped write, for example.FILE — The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston.The Carnegie Mellon researcher involved in the study did not respond to a request for comment. The Microsoft researchers were not available for comment, according to a company representative. But in an emailed statement, Lev Tankelevitch, a senior researcher at Microsoft who was a co-author of the study, said AI works best when people use it as a “thought partner,” encouraging them to engage with it critically. “All of the research underway to understand AI’s impact on cognition is essential to helping us design tools that promote critical thinking,” Tankelevitch said. The problem, Gerlich and other researchers say, is that AI tools — at least as they exist today — don’t necessarily encourage that. Instead, those tools make it easy for users to avoid “effortful thinking,” said Benjamin Riley, the founder of Cognitive Resonance, a think tank focused on generative AI and understanding human cognition. While people have been able to use older tools, such as calculators or online search engines, to do some of their thinking for them, generative AI stands apart, Riley said. “We’ve never before had a tool that was free and readily available that could essentially create something new ... just by prompting it with whatever you want,” he said. The danger — as even the researchers on the Microsoft study acknowledge in their report — is that because it’s so easy to use, people can become overreliant on AI and lose their ability to think critically about what it’s producing. That’s of particular concern when it comes to students, who are already widely adopting such tools, Riley said. One of the promises of AI is that it will take on mundane, repetitive tasks. But it’s often through doing analytical tasks over and over that people hone their critical thinking, researchers say. “While GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving,” the Microsoft researchers said in their report.The two studies did offer some hope. Gerlich’s study found that the more education people had, the more likely they were to engage in critical thinking. It also indicated that education tended to counteract some of the effect of AI use on such thinking; even among people who used AI tools a lot, people with more education tended to use critical thinking more often. Similarly, the Microsoft study found that the more confident people were in themselves and being able to scrutinize AI’s output, the more likely they were to engage in critical thinking — particularly in making use of and evaluating what the tools generated. Many such people did so even though it required more time and effort. The key thing in terms of how AI affects critical thinking, is how people approach and use it, Gerlich said. Tempting as it might be, it’s important not to simply offload all thinking to such tools, but instead to be thoughtful about how to use them and about what they produce, he said.twolverton@sfexaminer.comSt. George Absinthe drink being made with a sugar cube at Absinthe Brasserie & Bar at 398 Hayes St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.In my recent journey to find and make the best cocktails in San Francisco, I’ve tried some unusual things — for me, at least. There wasThis week, I wanted to go back to the classics. So I went to Absinthe Brasserie, a Hayes Valley stalwart for sazeracs, martinis and all the classic cocktails that can elevate an early dinner before rushing off to the performing-arts venues just steps away. I’m from a family of opera lovers who prefer a good matinee, so I’ve usually enjoyed a glass of wine along with my French onion soup on one of my many visits. Cocktails before a matinee is a recipe for falling asleep in my velvet chair while Elsa belts out her lament in the third act of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” I visited Eric Stashak, the bar director at Absinthe, at the restaurant on a quiet weekday afternoon to learn what makes a cocktail special and how he tries to bring that into his curated repertoire of drinks. “When we opened in 1998, we were one of the major players in the bay for doing ingredient-focused, classic-inspired and classic-adjacent cocktails,” he said. That means fresh squeezed juices, syrups made in-house, and a focus on seasonal elements, like the sweet potato and pear currently on the winter menu. The Ginger Rogers cocktail made by bartender Eric Stashak at Absinthe Brasserie & Bar at 398 Hayes St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.But Stashak, who’s been the director for the last two years, said that the bar has stuck to classic preparation and “a simple approach,” while other newer cocktail bars are trying newfangled gadgets such as centrifuges to make their drinks. To my delight, Stashak showed me how to make a drink from the original Absinthe menu nearly 30 years ago: the Ginger Rogers. “When I took over the program, it was the only stipulation that I keep this on somewhere on the menu,” he said.“It tastes exactly like it tastes,” Stashak said. “When I think of creating a new cocktail, the word I always go back to is integration — all the flavors, be they very different, come together to taste like one single thing.The Ginger Rogers is similar to my favorite cocktail, the Moscow Mule, except it includes muddled mint and uses gin, not vodka. I avoid gin if at all possible due to its flavor, but I figured it couldn’t be so bad combined with my other favorite things, ginger beer and lime juice. It starts with a tall glass and a bunch of mint leaves, about 10 of them. That’s followed by three-fourths of an ounce of ginger syrup, which is made in-house with cardamom, pepper and ginger, plus three-fourths of an ounce of fresh lime juice. All are mixed together in the bottom of the glass with a wooden muddler. Examiner reporter Natalia Gurevich learns how to make a Ginger Rogers cocktail from bartender Eric Stashak at Absinthe Brasserie & Bar at 398 Hayes St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.Up until this point, I’d been under the impression that one should never order a mojito at a bar because bartenders find muddling annoying, but Stashak said that he never minds doing it and, as I worked alongside him, I found it kind of soothing to crush something. Lightly, that is — Stashak said their glasses break all the time. The mixture is then followed with 1½ ounces of Bombay Sapphire gin, followed by Fever Tree ginger beer poured over the top, to about two-thirds of the glass. Finished with a scoop of ice filled up to the top, a sliced lime and a sprig of mint as a garnish, it was one of the easier drinks I’d made so far. And it had exactly what I love about a Moscow Mule: It was light and refreshing, and it tasted like spring might be coming. I didn’t even mind the gin. But I knew I would be remiss if I didn’t also ask about Absinthe’s namesake spirit — which, contrary to popular lore, doesn’t tend to cause hallucinations. “People went from drinking brandy or wine to drinking absinthe, which is 25% more alcohol by volume, so from 80 proof to 180,” he said. “Basically, they were just getting alcohol psychosis.”The bar at Absinthe carries around 25 different types, Stashak said, and they do get a lot of customers who are looking for it, even just for the novelty. But he’s found most people don’t like it, due to the overpowering licorice flavor of the anise. The proper way to serve it is with an “absinthe fountain,” a kind of ice-water dispenser with four spigots, popularized in the 19th century due to the belief that the pour-over would affect the ensuing hallucinations.Examiner reporter Natalia Gurevich is all smiles as she tastes a Ginger Rogers cocktail she made at Absinthe Brasserie & Bar at 398 Hayes St. in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. An absinthe goblet filled with up to two ounces of the spirit goes under one of the spigots, with a special spoon on top that allows the loosely packed “absinthe sugar” to dissolve slowly into the glass. As the water and sugar slowly drip in, the bright green of the absinthe changes to a cloudy cream, called the “louche” effect. “A louche is what happens when water interacts with volatile flavor esters, which are the things that you taste,” Stashak said. “I also warn people, it’s a very strong flavor,” he said. “Put your anise pants on. You hate licorice, that’s a flavor you despise? Just don’t do it.” The end result is a milky glass of what I can only describe as a really strong, slightly sweet, toothpaste-flavored drink. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but I was pleased to have my Ginger Rogers on deck as a palate cleanser to wash away my errant thoughts of hallucination — and the medicinal flavors.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks as he attends at the Kakao media day with Kakao CEO Shina Chung in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025. The venture and startup industries are increasingly being divided between a small number of haves in San Francisco and a much larger number of have-nots, a new report indicates. Venture investment in U.S. startups more than doubled in the first quarter from the same period last year to $91.5 billion, according to the report from industry research firm PitchBook. But nearly half of that tally went to just two San Francisco artificial-intelligence companies — OpenAI and Anthropic. Meanwhile, U.S. venture firms raised $10 billion in the period, about 7% more than last year. But if the industry continues at that pace for the rest of this year, it would raise the least amount of capital since 2013. And firms closed just 87 new funds last quarter, 13 fewer than last year. “The discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots has really expanded,” said Emily Zheng, a senior venture capital analyst at PitchBook.than any other city in the world, so the state of the industry has big implications for The City and its economy. In terms of the total number of dollars invested in U.S. startups last quarter, the industry would seem to be thriving. The $91.5 billion tally was the largest amount for a single quarter since the fourth quarter of 2021, during the immediate post-pandemic boom, according to PitchBook’s data. It’s also about 43% of what venture firms invested in U.S. startups all last year and more than they invested in 2017.. Another $4.5 billion went to Anthropic, spread across two rounds. All told, the top 10 biggest funding rounds of the quarter — which went to just nine companies — together added up to $53.3 billion, or 57% of the total. Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder of Anthropic, attends the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. The san Francisco company raised $4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2025, nearly 5% of all venture funding nationwide during that time.PitchBook estimated that nationwide, 3,990 startups raised venture money in the first three months of the year. That was five fewer than in the first quarter last year. “For other companies that aren’t in these top-tier, top 10 companies that are getting a lot of the dollars, it’s a little bit of a tougher market,” Zheng said. That was especially the case for companies that aren’t in the AI sector. Some 71% of U.S. venture dollars invested in the quarter went to AI startups, and those companies accounted for 33.2% of all funding deals in the period, both record amounts. By contrast, in the first quarter last year, AI companies accounted for 35.1% of U.S. venture dollars and 28.1% of deals. While venture investors have focused on particular sectors in the past, that share of investment going into just one area is unprecedented, Zheng said.Although PitchBook hasn’t yet broken out the geographical distribution of venture dollars in the quarter, that surge in AI investment is likely good news for San Francisco, which What might not be a good sign for The City or startup hubs elsewhere is that venture firms themselves continued to struggle to raise new cash. Fundraising by such firms fell from a peak of $190.2 billion in 2022 to $96.5 billion in 2023 and $78.1 billion last year. If their ability to attract new capital continues at the pace they were at in the first quarter, they’d raise little more than half of 2024’s tally this year. Much of the problem venture firms have faced is that they’ve been struggling since the stock market slumped in 2022 to return capital to their own investors, their limited partners. Firms traditionally do that through so-called exits, which is when a startup goes public or is acquired. When a startup exits, the venture firms that invested in it typically take the proceeds and distribute them to their limited partners.An electronic display shows financial information on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 7, 2025. Exits did pick up a bit in the first quarter. PitchBook estimated 385 startups either were acquired or went public in the period, up from 287 in the same quarter a year ago. The combined value of those exits — based on either the company’s initial market capitalization when it went public or the amount for which it was acquired — hit $56.2 billion, up $40.5 billion from the first quarter last year. But just one company — AI data center operator CoreWeave — accounted for more than 40% of the total exit value when it And that rebound for exits could be short-lived. The market sell-off this week in the wake of President Donald Trump’s announcement of new and widespread tariffs is likely to further depress the IPO market, Zheng said. Indeed, on Friday, Meanwhile, Trump’s administration now appears to be less likely to approve mergers than at least some in the venture industry had hoped, she said. Coming into 2025, PitchBook had hoped the venture industry would rebound a bit this year after experiencing three tough years in a row, Zheng said. If the Federal Reserve carries through on its plan to cut interest rates and if the recent stock market volatility settles down, that could still happen, she said. “We’re still optimistic that ... we might see a very modest rebound the second half of the year, but probably at a lower level than what we came into the year with,” she said.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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