{"id":1000449,"date":"2024-01-19T08:54:45","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T16:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=1000449"},"modified":"2025-11-24T20:24:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T04:24:21","slug":"the-metacognitive-demands-and-opportunities-of-generative-ai","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/the-metacognitive-demands-and-opportunities-of-generative-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The Metacognitive Demands and Opportunities of Generative AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1011051 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/metacogbrainquare-crop-297x300.png\" alt=\"Brain thinking about a brain thinking about a brain\" width=\"297\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/metacogbrainquare-crop-297x300.png 297w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/metacogbrainquare-crop-768x777.png 768w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/metacogbrainquare-crop-178x180.png 178w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/metacogbrainquare-crop.png 983w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 297px) 100vw, 297px\" \/>Generative AI (GenAI) systems offer unprecedented opportunities for transforming professional and personal work, yet present challenges around prompting, evaluating and relying on outputs, and optimizing workflows. We argue that metacognition &#8211; the psychological ability to monitor and control one&#8217;s thoughts and behavior &#8211; offers a valuable lens to understand and design for these usability challenges. Drawing on research in psychology and cognitive science, and recent GenAI user studies, we illustrate how GenAI systems impose metacognitive demands on users, requiring a high degree of metacognitive monitoring and control. We propose these demands could be addressed by integrating metacognitive support strategies into GenAI systems, and by designing GenAI systems to reduce their metacognitive demand by targeting explainability and customizability. Metacognition offers a coherent framework for understanding the usability challenges posed by GenAI, enabling us to offer research and design directions to advance human-GenAI interaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Generative AI (GenAI) systems offer unprecedented opportunities for transforming professional and personal work, yet present challenges around prompting, evaluating and relying on outputs, and optimizing workflows. We argue that metacognition &#8211; the psychological ability to monitor and control one&#8217;s thoughts and behavior &#8211; offers a valuable lens to understand and design for these usability challenges. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"Lev Tankelevitch, Viktor Kewenig, Auste Simkute, Ava Elizabeth Scott, Advait Sarkar, Abigail Sellen, and Sean Rintel. 2024. The Metacognitive Demands and Opportunities of Generative AI. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 680, 1\u201324. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3613904.3642902","msr_conference_name":"CHI '24","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":null,"msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2024-5-1","msr_highlight_text":"Best Paper, CHI 2024","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"https:\/\/chi2024.acm.org\/","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[246574],"research-area":[13556,13554,13559],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[248485],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[261670],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1000449","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-highlight-award","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-social-sciences","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-human-computer-interaction"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2024-5-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"Best Paper, CHI 2024","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2312.10893","label_id":"252679","label":0},{"type":"doi","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"10.1145\/3613904.3642902","label_id":"243106","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.48550\/arXiv.2312.10893","label_id":"252679","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Lev Tankelevitch","user_id":43209,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Lev Tankelevitch"},{"type":"text","value":"Viktor Kewenig","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Auste Simkute","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Ava Elizabeth Scott","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Advait Sarkar","user_id":37146,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Advait Sarkar"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Abigail Sellen","user_id":31112,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Abigail Sellen"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sean Rintel","user_id":33579,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sean Rintel"}],"msr_impact_theme":["Resilience"],"msr_research_lab":[199561],"msr_event":[1019022],"msr_group":[1142579],"msr_project":[1151473,1053711,717493],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":1151473,"post_title":"Psychological influences of AI","post_name":"psychological-influences-of-ai","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2025-10-07 13:27:35","post_modified":"2025-10-31 13:39:10","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/psychological-influences-of-ai\/","post_excerpt":"The Psychological Influences of AI (Psi) project explores how AI\u2014especially generative AI\u2014affects human psychology, including cognition, emotion, behavior, and well-being. 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