Paper
Study: AI Advice Weakens Human Critical Thinking, Reduces Willingness to Say "I Don't Know"
A study by multiple universities in France and Italy found that after receiving AI advice, the proportion of participants admitting "I don't know" plummeted from 44% to 3%, answer accuracy dropped from 27% to 9%, while confidence surged from 30% to 76%. The experiment used models such as Step 3.5 Flash, GPT-5.5, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Gemini 3.5 Flash. Even when AI gave wrong answers, people were less likely to withhold judgment. Monetary incentives only raised the "I don't know" rate to 8%, still far below the 44% without AI.
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