Generative AI tools Reducing students' creative thinking?
Source:
ScienceDirect
This scientific study was published in April 2024 in the Journal of Creativity. It is a scientific study carried out by researchers Sabrina Habib Thomas Vogel, Xiao Anli and Evelyn Thorne.
The purpose of this research is twofold. Firstly, it investigated whether the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools (GenAI or Generative AI) such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's BARD has any impact on human creativity, and more specifically on student creativity. Let's not forget that it's these students who will later be employed by companies.
The other aim of this research is to help teachers incorporate the use of generative AI tools into their teaching.
To carry out this study, the group of researchers selected a panel of 100 students in the first year of a course entitled “Creative Thinking & Problem Solving”.
By way of background, this course is offered at a university free of charge. The course is accessible to the whole campus, either face-to-face or in the form of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).
For the technical part, the researchers used the ChatGPT 3 generative AI tool. Admittedly, this is not a recent version of ChatGPT, but the operating principle remains identical to the latest versions.
As for the analysis method, the researchers used the AUT tool. Designed by J.P. Guilford in 1967, AUT is a test used to assess an individual's divergent thinking (a key element of creativity). It involves imagining the greatest number of possible uses for a common object within a given timeframe.
For example, given a “brick”, you might imagine uses such as “paperweight”, “doorstop” or “building material”.
Divergent thinking is assessed on the basis of 4 criteria:
- Fluidity: The total number of different uses you can think of.
- Originality: the degree of uniqueness or rarity of the uses.
- Flexibility: The variety of categories into which your uses fall.
- Elaboration: the amount of detail in your answers.
This test explores and measures creative potential, encouraging individuals to go beyond conventional uses and come up with innovative ideas.
The first AUT test was carried out before the students started the course, to limit the influence of teaching. Students were asked to set a timer for 3 minutes and, during this time, write down as many uses of a paper clip as they could imagine without the aid of electronics, then type in their answers to submit the work.
The same activity was repeated four weeks later, but this time they were asked to use ChatGPT-3 to help them in their brainstorming process. Students had to distinguish between their ideas and those of the AI when handing in the work, and even write a reflection on their brainstorming experience without any tools in relation to the AI's help.
The overall feedback from this scientific study was positive. Across the entire panel, there were 42 comments favorable or positive to the use of AI Generative. This compares with just 18 negative comments.
Among the positive comments, students recognized the time saved and the variety of answers provided by the use of Generative AI.
On the negative side, students highlighted the risk of plagiarism and infringement of intellectual property rights. In other words, the Generative AI-based tool is not creative. It simply provides an answer that already exists.
The use of AI in this study led to a high level of fluency (idea generation), which the students appreciated for brainstorming and idea initiation, as the AI provided a variety of detailed responses with incredible speed - less than a minute from login to responses.
However, some students expressed reservations about the AI taking over the thinking process, raising concerns that the AI might stifle their individual (human) creative thinking and, consequently, their confidence.
Although the research was aimed at the academic world, the results can also be applied to the corporate world. Indeed, tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's BARD can also be used in brainstorming sessions or in advertising companies.
Although these results are positive, it should be borne in mind that this panel is not representative of the population. It is a homogeneous panel of students with a university degree in creativity.
On the technical side, the Generative AI tool used is not the most recent version of ChatGPT (version used: ChatGPT-3).