The Cost of Asking AI
“I used Copilot this week,” my husband whispered to me, in what sounds like the start of a particularly weird Dear Penthouse letter.
We were whispering because we were in bed, and in the next room, our youngest had just muttered “mumma”, so we were desperately trying to avoid further attention.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. I had been updating my husband on my AI and animal welfare research, which colleagues at the Dick Vet will get to hear about on Wednesday, at our AI Symposium. Such previews are one of the great benefits, or drawbacks, of marriage to me. Depending on your point of view. “What did you think about it?”
My husband went on to talk about his experiences with Copilot, where it had been useful prompting him how to remember an Excel skill he hadn’t used in a while. He talked about how, while Copilot didn’t actually know the right answer, it gave him enough component blocks to form the right answer for himself.
I asked if he thought it was faster than just googling, and we talked about how search engines have gotten so much worse at giving you the right answer, and I said something like: “Funny you did that on a day there was no one else in the office, that’s the kind of conversation its useful to have with people.”
“Yeah,” he said, “It’s easier than a person though, especially if you’re new to the workplace or senior in your role. You can ask a stupid question.”
At this point, time slowed down, and I heard the saxophones getting louder.
“I fucking wrote a paper on this”, I didn’t scream, or jump out of bed to say.
But I did suddenly understand something. That very week, I had resurrected the ‘sleeping’ giant that is the R(D)SVS Data Methods Club email list, and said something like:
Friends! I am losing the plot and don’t want to ask AI
And so I emailed an open email list around my whole school asking for help. A lot of people don’t want to do that. I have used Social Capital Theory to explain why students will use lecture recordings to pause and replay a lecture instead of asking the lecturer to say something again.
Social Capital Theory suggests that there is a kind of invisible currency we spend in our interactions with people. You can acquire that currency through being trustworthy, or nice, or ‘familiar’. If you spend too much currency, for example, by asking too many questions, you make the social interactions harder for yourself.
I’m a big believer in conversations being important learning tools. I have wandered the corridors of my offices, for years, looking for someone to talk at so I can work a problem out. I can definitely understand why my husband found the conversational aspect of genAI useful, even though it couldn’t provide the answer, because that’s what a human conversation does too. You take the parts you need.
I think I finally understand why so many people are using genAI, because it’s not good at what it does, but it is free in terms of its social expenditure. And when return-to-office mandates are being patchily employed, and you’re not sure where your colleagues are, I can see why the ever-present and ever-interruptable genAI is easier to turn to than walking down the corridor to try and interrupt a colleague on headphones, or ping a Teams message saying ‘are you busy’? You get the conversation, without looking stupid.
I’m teaching my Research Methods and Data Analysis course right now, and we spend a lot of time talking about the replication crisis, ontology, epistemology, and methodology. I have some anonymous engagement tools where students are free to say things like “I don’t understand why you brought up the Amy Cuddy bullying story here”. And I have discussion boards where we get good questions and engagement and spend a lot of effort reiterating that there’s no such thing as a silly question, and trying to respond warmly to each one. I always want to generate that you’re one of today’s lucky ten thousand energy.
Maybe this has been obvious to everyone else for ages, but it has finally clicked for me why people are going to a subpar tool for explanations and help, and it is because it isn’t judging them for asking.
Oh duh.