The Generative AI Learning Penalty: Evidence from Chinese Secondary Education
Using 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students in grades 7-12, we study how generative AI affects homework productivity and learning. The data combine monthly closed-book exams, high-school and college entrance exams, and homework scores and completion time across nine subjects. We exploit staggered AI adoption in a difference-in-differences design. AI adoption raises homework scores by 18% and reduces completion time by 30%, but lowers monthly exam scores by 20% within six months. High-stakes entrance-exam scores fall by 18 and 24%, with the full penalty emerging only after about two years. The losses are largest in social science subjects, followed by STEM and languages, and are especially large for junior students, high-achieving students, and boys. The learning losses are concentrated among roughly 80% of AI users whose behavior is consistent with homework outsourcing, as indicated by exceptionally short homework completion time coupled with high homework scores. AI users who maintain similar homework completion time as non-AI users experience small learning losses.
Edit: moving my comment up here
Just in case as it’s formatted a bit weirdly
X-Axis: Homework scores
Y-Axis: Exam scores
Looks like millennials / elder Gen z are going to be the most educated generation in history. Older generations were taught when they knew less about the world and education, younger generations are screwed both by the pandemic and now AI.
So Idiocracy was sort of right, only it’s not the eugenics “dumb people have more kids” reason they gave, it’s just us offloading our thinking to machines.