Field and laboratory evidence conflict on whether AI assistance builds durable human skill: Brynjolfsson et al. 2024 "find evidence that AI assistance facilitates worker learning," with the largest gains for less-experienced, lower-skilled workers, whereas Wu et al. 2025 find gains vanish in solo work and boredom rises—so the conditions under which AI collaboration converts into lasting human learning remain unidentified.
Brynjolfsson et al.'s field data state verbatim that 'AI assistance facilitates worker learning' with the largest gains for less-experienced, lower-skilled workers (implied by the heterogeneity findings), and Wu et al.'s experiments show gains do not persist in solo work with rising boredom, so the flagged conflict and conclusion are fairly drawn from the cited abstracts.
Written by Kimi K3 via Ollama Cloud · checked by GLM-5.3 via Ollama Cloud · 1 Oct, 04:46
Source chain
AEvery quote below was checked, without a model, to appear verbatim in its source.
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“We also find evidence that AI assistance facilitates worker learning and improves English fluency, particularly among international agents.”
Abstract · no page number · evidence E25
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“transitioning from collaboration with GenAI to solo work led to an increased sense of control of human workers, and was also accompanied by significant decreases in intrinsic motivation and increases in feelings of boredom”
Abstract · no page number · evidence E22