2026/05/20 by Sina Rismanchian, Hasan Uzun, Jeffrey Matayoshi +2 · 5 voices
#cs.CY #cs.AI #cs.HC
How much have students' ordinary learning processes shifted in response to generative AI, and how does that affect their durable learning outcomes? Self-report surveys show little change, while small-scale behavioral studies report widespread AI use without the scale or duration to measure learning consequences. We address both questions using a ten-year panel of 3.2 million ALEKS learning interactions for investigating time-on-task, complemented by ALEKS PPL placement-assessment data for examining proctoring and learning outcomes, with a quasi-experimental design exploiting variation in tasks that are more susceptible to AI (text-based word problems) and less susceptible to AI (interactive graph-based problems). Learning time on AI-susceptible problems declines 2.8% per quarter among college students after ChatGPT's release, cumulating to 26.9% over eleven quarters; high-schoolers show 31.3%, middle-schoolers 9.0%, and Grade 5 students no detectable change. Among college students, the post-ChatGPT divergence vanishes entirely under proctoring, ruling out broad efficiency gains as the likely explanation. Logistic fixed-effects models on randomly assigned proctored retention items yield a 25% cumulative decline in odds of correct response; the same estimator on non-proctored assessment produces a large opposite-signed increase -- inconsistent with any platform, cohort, or curriculum explanation. These results are among the first large-scale behavioral and outcome evidence that generative AI has altered how students study and the knowledge they build -- the population-level indicator of cognitive surrender, with direct implications for educational research, assessment governance, and AI policy.