AI Boosted Homework Scores, Then Exam Scores Dropped (economist.com)
- Reference: 0185089438
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/08/21/1951227/ai-boosted-homework-scores-then-exam-scores-dropped
- Source link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/08/18/does-ai-stop-children-from-learning
> Students and school children are increasingly using artificial intelligence. A survey last year by Chegg, an ed-tech firm, found that 80% of rich-world undergraduates used it in their studies. More recent polls put the figure at 94% in Britain and 93% in Germany. Such widespread adoption has fueled concerns about the impact the technology might be having on learning. Teachers report marking identikit essays that they suspect are churned out by ChatGPT. Yet firm evidence on AI's educational effects has been lacking.
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> David Stromberg of Stockholm University and Victor Lei and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong [1]set out to fill the gap. They tracked 27,000 pupils aged 12-18 in China, where AI adoption has been fast. Around 80% reported using models such as Doubao and DeepSeek; the other 20% formed the control group.
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> The results are eye-opening. After six months, pupils using AI saw their average homework score rise by 18% across all subjects. The time they took to complete each assignment fell from an average of 64 minutes to 45. But come exam time, the same students [2]scored 20% below their classmates who had not called on AI's help . Homework scores once predicted exam performance; now those who score highest are, perversely, more likely to do worse in exams.
The takeaway: "AI can boost learning productivity, but only for those who use the technology intelligently," reports The Economist. "Students must resist the temptation to reach for an AI-generated answer before thinking things through for themselves."
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6977138
[2] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/08/18/does-ai-stop-children-from-learning
Shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not that shocked.
Using an AI to do your homework gets the homework done without you learning the subject. Then you fail the exam.
Yeah, not shocked at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. There's been widespread misrepresentation of this (preprint!) in the media. What they actually found: test scores correspond to how much time you spend doing homework, regardless of whether you use AI or not. Which should not be a surprising result! Of course, the AI people, esp. those who had been using AI for more than a few months, stopped spending much time on their homework, and then their test scores fell to match the non-AI users who didn't spend much time in their homework either.
The TL/DR
Re: (Score:3)
whether or not you use AI
No. having someone do the work for you absolutely reduces your learning of the homework material. it also reduces your time spent but your red herring is glowing nice and bright.
or knows the material
um, what? A test is absolutely on how well someone knows the material.
Playing devil's advocate today?
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That is not what they found. What they found is that if you spend 60 minutes doing the homework with AI, you learn approximately as much as someone who spends 60 minutes doing it without AI. If you spend 20 minutes doing it with AI, you learn as much as someone who spends 20 minutes doing it without AI. Etc. The only real difference is that the AI people get way better homework scores, and as a result, tend to stop spending as much time, and thus tend to learn less.
That's what this preprint study found.
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> having someone do the work for you absolutely reduces your learning of the homework material. it also reduces your time spent but your red herring is glowing nice and bright.
He's got a valid point. For example, if you use wolfram alpha after you do a math problem to check the result you came up with you can actually learn MORE than just doing the problem yourself, and may even add to the time the work takes, as if your result is wrong, you'll spend extra time working out where you went wrong and fixing it. And ultimately learning more in the process.
OTOH - If you use wolfram alpha to DO the question for you, you will learn nothing at all.
But further to that, you can even use to
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, we should all be surprised that a tool created to increase efficiency at which documentation can be produced with little human input, indeed increases the efficiency at which documentation can be produced with little human input.
And when you take the tool away, the human that only knows how to use the tool is as useless as a broken tool.
Not the end of the world (Score:3)
I just had AI teach me how this medical wireless thermometer works and how to install it for a ticket from one of our medical customers. So? It was faster than reading the PDF and I could vet the info in real time by running through the setup in a test environment.
AI is just a fast information processor. The question is - is the end user a lazy, shortcut taking asshole with no work ethic because of lack of proper parenting or are they a driven worker that wants to learn faster.
Get rid of homework (Score:4, Insightful)
and test in-person. Your electronic devices go in a locker before entering the test area (many industries have this requirement).
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Homework never works at home.
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100% this. Even a short 5-minute quiz with just a couple questions at the start of each day will do the trick. But you simply can't rely on homework scores to be a proxy of learning or time spent studying anymore. Brief daily quizzes on the previous day's material will force them to.
Also, It's not like students have the excuse of, "I couldn't study, I didn't have anyone to explain X to me" anymore. The very AI that they might otherwise use to cheat on their homework can also explain to them the things th
Re: (Score:1)
Homework has never been a productive use of the students time. If you are at school, you should be learning there. If you are at home you should be socializing with your family or friends.
Like think about it for 5 seconds. Why are people so angry now. Why are people addicted to social media? Because they have not learned boundaries.
If students are spending all their waking time doing homework for 8 different classes, with teachers who don't talk to each other to talk about homework load, you're going to hav
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Most subjects are best learned through repetition. Learning your multiplication tables isn't something you just reason out. Learning how to do the process of long division or add fractions is best done by having the student do it thousands of times. Our little monkey brains need to be force fed information in order to build up any hope of retention.
People are addicted to social media because we adults shifted the responsibility for self-discipline onto children. That's bad, we are bad for letting it get thi
We have known homework is useless for years (Score:3, Interesting)
A very tiny amount of homework can be beneficial. We don't give a very tiny amount of homework. When my kid was in high school which admittedly was going on a decade ago now I think, I mean they just hit grad school for fuck sake also Christ I'm old, my kid had sometimes 6 to 8 hours of homework on a fucking school night.
From what I heard the local chamber of commerce AKA a bunch of asshole rich businessmen who never worked a day in their fucking lives, lobbied the school board to drastically increase t