The more people use AI, the more likely they are to overestimate their own abilities

When we are asked how good we are at something, we tend to make that assessment completely wrong. It is a universal human tendency whose effects are most pronounced among people of lesser ability. Called Dunning-Krüger effectAccording to the psychologists who first studied it, this phenomenon means that people who are not very good at a particular task are overconfident, while people who are highly skilled tend to underestimate their abilities. This is often revealed through cognitive tests that assess attention, decision-making, judgment, and language.

But now scientists at Finland’s Aalto University (along with collaborators in Germany and Canada) have found that this is the case artificial intelligence (AI) almost eliminates the Dunning-Kruger effect – in fact, it almost reverses it.