AI for Me, Not (Yet) for Thee? Desirable Difficulties and Deliberate Friction with LLMs in Social Science Education

Author
Affiliation

Georgia State University

Latest version

April 22, 2026

Content forthcoming…

References

Bain, Ken. 2004. What the Best College Teachers Do. Harvard University Press.
Bastani, Hamsa, Osbert Bastani, Alp Sungu, Haosen Ge, Özge Kabakcı, and Rei Mariman. 2025. “Generative AI Without Guardrails Can Harm Learning: Evidence from High School Mathematics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (26): e2422633122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122.
Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. 2025. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. HarperCollins.
Bjork, Elizabeth Ligon, and Robert A. Bjork. 2011. “Making Things Hard on Yourself, but in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning.” In Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, edited by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Richard W. Pew, Leaetta M. Hough, and James R. Pomerantz. Worth Publishers.
Çetinkaya-Rundel, Mine. 2025. “Leveraging LLMs for Student Feedback in Introductory Data Science Courses.” Posit::conf 2025, Atlanta, Georgia, September 17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gS7AUGwZPs.
Chiang, Ted. 2024. “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art.” The New Yorker, August 31. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art.
Chung, Angel Tsai-Hsuan, Botong Zhang, Ling-Chieh Kung, Hamsa Bastani, and Osbert Bastani. 2026. “Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-guided Reinforcement Learning.” Pre-published. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6423358.
Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.
Guest, Olivia, Marcela Suarez, Barbara Müller, et al. 2025. “Against the Uncritical Adoption of ’AI’ Technologies in Academia.” Pre-published September 5. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17065098.
Hicks, Cat. (2026) 2026a. DrCatHicks/Learning-Goal. February 25, released April 21. https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-goal.
Hicks, Cat. (2026) 2026b. DrCatHicks/Learning-Opportunities. February 7, released April 22. https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-opportunities.
Hicks, Michael Townsen, James Humphries, and Joe Slater. 2024. ChatGPT Is Bullshit.” Ethics and Information Technology 26 (2): 38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5.
Hogg, David W. 2026. “Why Do We Do Astrophysics?” Pre-published February 10. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.10181.
Hogg, Natalie B. 2026. “Find the Stable and Pull Out the Bolt.” February 24. https://web.archive.org/web/20260405135326/https://nataliebhogg.com/2026/03/09/find-the-stable-and-pull-out-the-bolt/.
Juavinett, Ashley. 2026. “How to Teach Programming in the Age of AI.” The Transmitter, ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.53053/IXOZ2506.
Juavinett, Ashley, and Catherine M. Hicks. 2026. You Can Learn with AI. Season 2, episode 4, February 16. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2396236/episodes/18692591-you-can-learn-with-ai.
Karamanis, Minas. 2026. “The Machines Are Fine. I’m Worried about Us.” March 30. https://web.archive.org/web/20260414025200/https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/.
Kosmyna, Nataliya, Eugene Hauptmann, Ye Tong Yuan, et al. 2025. “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.” Pre-published December 31. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872.
Lehmann, Matthias, Philipp B. Cornelius, and Fabian J. Sting. 2025. AI Meets the Classroom: When Do Large Language Models Harm Learning?” Pre-published March 8. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.09047.
Lemire, Daniel. 2025. Hard Work Is a Virtue. https://web.archive.org/web/20251004103641/https://lemire.me/blog/2025/09/21/hard-work-is-a-virtue/.
Lin, Patrick. 2025. “Why We’re Not Using AI in This Course, Despite Its Obvious Benefits.” Patrick Lin’s Substack, August 7. https://web.archive.org/web/20260310092513/https://emergingethics.substack.com/p/why-were-not-using-ai-in-this-course.
Lodge, Jason M., and Leslie Loble. 2026. Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Offloading and Implications for Education. University of Technology Sydney. https://doi.org/10.71741/4PYXMBNJAQ.31302475.
Logan, Charles, T. Philip Nichols, and Antero Garcia. 2025. “Teach Like a Luddite.” Phi Delta Kappan 107 (3–4): 37–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/00317217251405524.
Poldrack, Russell. 2025. AI-assisted Coding: 10 Simple Rules to Maintain Scientific Rigor.” The Transmitter, ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.53053/LCDN3424.
Poulidis, Stefanos, Hamsa Bastani, and Osbert Bastani. 2025. “Self-Regulated AI Use Hinders Long-Term Learning.” Pre-published. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5604932.
Requarth, Tim. 2025. “From Bench to Bot: Why AI-powered Writing May Not Deliver on Its Promise.” The Transmitter, ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.53053/HZQR1694.
Rosenzweig, Jane. 2023. AI-assisted Writing Is Close to Becoming as Standard as Spell Check. Here’s the Catch.” Los Angeles Times, June 20. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-20/google-microsoft-chatgpt-ai-writing-assistants-artificial-intelligence.
Shaw, Steven D, and Gideon Nave. 2026. “Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI Is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender.” Pre-published January 12. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yk25n_v1.
Shen, Judy Hanwen, and Alex Tamkin. 2026. “How AI Impacts Skill Formation.” Pre-published February 1. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.20245.
Soderstrom, Nicholas C., and Robert A. Bjork. 2015. “Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2): 176–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615569000.