Practicing with AI was less effortful than practicing alone, with participants spending less time and logging fewer keystrokes¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r3 · q4 · i0 negligible
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q4 i0 Participants practicing with AI spent 0.44 fewer minutes during practice (d=-.12) and logged roughly a quarter as many total keystrokes compared to those practicing alone. → Benjamin Lira 2025

Evidence¶

Benjamin Lira 2025¶

Benjamin Lira, Todd Rogers, Daniel G. Goldstein, Lyle Ungar, and Angela L. Duckworth. (2025). Coach not crutch: Evidence that AI can improve writing skill despite reducing effort. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02880 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.02880

q4 · i0 · causal · r3

Same pre-registered experiment (N=2,238). Participants practicing with AI "spent 0.44 fewer minutes" during the practice phase (d=-.12, p=.025); the time difference was small. Self-reported effort was also lower.

"participants who practiced with the AI tool spent 0.44 fewer minutes during the practice phase (3.73 vs. 4.17;d= −.12,p= .025), logged roughly a quarter as many total keystrokes (26%d= −.44,p<.001)"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Student effort on assignments, measured by time-on-task and keystrokes, showed no evidence of decrease when AI use was allowed — reports the opposite
• AI access shifts learning-time composition away from writing toward reading and searching, with total learning time unchanged — related
• AI-tutored students spend less time on task than the 60-minute in-class lesson, with no correlation between time and scores — related
• Engage-to-Unlock redistributed effort across tasks: participants spent more time writing and less time evaluating, without increasing overall task duration — related