How AI Impacts Skill Formation

This study measures the impact of using AI tools on skill formation. We are motivated by the scenario of junior engineers acquiring new skills on the job. While the use of AI tools may improve productivity for these engineers, would they also inhibit skill formation? We conduct experiments with an upskilling coding component and an evaluation component for software engineering skills, in particular. We measure whether AI improves the productivity of a new coding task and, subsequently, whether this use of AI reduces the level of understanding of the new task.