Does Using ChatGPT Result in Human Cognitive Augmentation?

Abstract: Human cognitive performance is enhanced by the use of tools. For example, a human can produce a much greater, and more accurate, volume of mathematical calculation in a unit of time using a calculator or a spreadsheet application on a computer. Such tools have taken over the burden of lower level cognitive grunt work but the human still serves the role of the expert performing higher level thinking and reasoning. Recently, however, unsupervised, deep, machine learning has produced cognitive systems able to outperform humans in several domains. When humans use these tools in a human cog ensemble, the cognitive ability of the human is augmented. In some cases, even non experts can achieve, and even exceed, the performance of experts in a particular domain, synthetic expertise. A new cognitive system, ChatGPT, has burst onto the scene during the past year. This paper investigates human cognitive augmentation due to using ChatGPT by presenting the results of two experiments comparing responses created using ChatGPT with results created not using ChatGPT. We find using ChatGPT does not always result in cognitive augmentation and does not yet replace human judgement, discernment, and evaluation in certain types of tasks. In fact, ChatGPT was observed to result in misleading users resulting in negative cognitive augmentation.