# Unreflected Acceptance -- Investigating the Negative Consequences of ChatGPT-Assisted Problem Solving in Physics Education

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.03087 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03087/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [GreaseLM: Graph REASoning Enhanced Language Models for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08860/) (2022)
- [Document-Level Machine Translation with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02210/) (2023)
- [ChatGPT for Programming Numerical Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12093/) (2023)
- [Multiple-Choice Question Generation: Towards an Automated Assessment Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11830/) (2022)
- [AI and the FCI: Can ChatGPT Project an Understanding of Introductory Physics?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01067/) (2023)
- [Advances in apparent conceptual physics reasoning in GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17012/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [AI-Augmented Brainwriting: Investigating the use of LLMs in group ideation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14978/) (2024)
- [Enhancing LLMs for Physics Problem-Solving using Reinforcement Learning with Human-AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06827/) (2024)
- [From Intuition to Understanding: Using AI Peers to Overcome Physics Misconceptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00408/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models on Solved and Unsolved Problems in Graph Theory: Implications for Computing Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05059/) (2026)
- [Talk2X -- An Open-Source Toolkit Facilitating Deployment of LLM-Powered Chatbots on the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03343/) (2025)
- [Teacher training in the age of AI: Impact on AI Literacy and Teachers' Attitudes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03011/) (2025)
- [Generative AI in Training and Coaching: Redefining the Design Process of Learning Materials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11662/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have recently gained popularity. However, the impact of their general availability through ChatGPT on sensitive areas of everyday life, such as education, remains unclear. Nevertheless, the societal impact on established educational methods is already being experienced by both students and educators. Our work focuses on higher physics education and examines problem solving strategies. In a study, students with a background in physics were assigned to solve physics exercises, with one group having access to an internet search engine (N=12) and the other group being allowed to use ChatGPT (N=27). We evaluated their performance, strategies, and interaction with the provided tools. Our results showed that nearly half of the solutions provided with the support of ChatGPT were mistakenly assumed to be correct by the students, indicating that they overly trusted ChatGPT even in their field of expertise. Likewise, in 42% of cases, students used copy & paste to query ChatGPT -- an approach only used in 4% of search engine queries -- highlighting the stark differences in interaction behavior between the groups and indicating limited reflection when using ChatGPT. In our work, we demonstrated a need to (1) guide students on how to interact with LLMs and (2) create awareness of potential shortcomings for users.