| The sudden and staggering emergence of LLM-based generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems is reshaping the current landscape of higher education, threatening to drastically alter current teaching and learning approaches for both teachers and students. Although the overall effects of this massive and rampant GenAI-driven adoption on education are still unknown and require broader and more comprehensive studies, all teaching and learning actors are already feeling their influence on the educational environment. In the double role of university teachers in computer science and experts in artificial intelligence, we are concerned about the effects of the unrestrained use of GenAI on the cognitive skills of our students. This paper describes our observations and conclusions when exploring the literacy on GenAI and the use of GenAI tools by first-year university students of an introductory subject on computer science of an engineering degree, with special focus on the students' critical thinking. In line with previous studies in the field, we found that the use of GenAI promoted metacognitive laziness. Although instructed otherwise, our students fell into cognitive offloading, delegating high-level cognitive skills (such as critical thinking) in AI systems, thus allowing GenAI systems to "think" and create for them. |
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