If you are a student like me, you probably feel like a guinea pig in the age of AI. Even if you prioritize academic integrity, you’ve probably found yourself considering the AI shortcuts that others use to coast to success. After all, why should you study until 2 am in the library, while your peers party at Coachella and still score perfect A’s?
You’re not alone in feeling this way. So many students are seduced by AI in education—"Write me a 1000-word essay on the factors leading to the American Civil War"—but are worried about how it might be negatively impacting their learning.
The popularization of the chatbot, and more specifically ChatGPT, threw the education system for a loop. (It’s little wonder why: in just five days post-launch, the application had over one million users, and in one year, 1.7 billion. Now, almost every website has some sort of AI integration.)
However, disputes of honor code, morality, and uncertainty have prevented universal regulation of AI in education.
With the ever-changing ideas of what knowledge is in today’s world, we are forced to question if using artificial intelligence to “help you with your homework” is just the next technological step in productive learning… or is it literally making you dumber?
How is AI changing the education system?
Calculators give us an interesting analogy for AI because they have been fully integrated into careers that rely on numbers. (Would you trust an accountant without a calculator?)
This dependence on calculators allowed educators to incorporate these tools in their standardized testing and curricula because, well, it’s far more advantageous to your education to learn how to skilfully use these tools than to struggle without them. Besides, calculators will always be there!
Now, the average person who does not use math in everyday life can probably do little beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Even if they did learn differential equations in AP Calculus, most do not retain that information for more than a few months.
Why?
Because they don’t need to. The technology is there for even them to use any time they want, which means they’re no longer exercising the skill of performing this complex math. In other words, the tool bred both dependency and reliability.
Here is where our analogy changes. While calculators changed the efficiency of math practices, AI is changing the efficiency of human output, mainly in its replication of critical thinking, decision-making, and analysis.
If you are in college or high school, your critical thinking skills are probably (hopefully) already developed. You can identify problems in a situation, reflect on diverse perspectives, ask meaningful questions, and pose thoughtful solutions.
The danger AI poses to education is that it teaches students to rely on it for critical thinking, like we rely on a calculator. By repeatedly using AI ChatBots to answer your homework questions, write essays, compose emails, etc. your thinking may become dependent on AI, if not addicted to the efficiency and accuracy of its output.
All without any personal risk or time in the process.
By ignoring the impacts of this reliance, we risk changing our view of what an education truly is.
[Psssst! if you're a student in school or college, you'll probably find these other articles super helpful:
- How to build strong study habits
- How we learn: the secret to all learning & human development
- Optimize your brain health for effective studying]
What AI does to your brain
If using AI overtime damages the development of your critical thinking, are we not jeopardizing one of, if not the most important factor in our human intelligence?
Well, if AI were all bad, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.
Innovations in artificial intelligence have led to an unprecedented amount of efficiency in various industries. Its algorithms can process an insane amount of information in a short amount of time, and it has the ability to quickly retrieve information from databases in a way never seen before.
The problem is that chatbots aren’t comparable to the online sources we are used to. They are built to replicate human thought patterns, conversation, and abilities with compounding data in order to personalize information.
This allows them to go beyond mere information seeking, and absorb some of the brain’s higher order thinking that is essential to our intelligence. And because some tasks are more challenging for the brain to perform, it can—because brains are fundamentally lazy organs—form a dependence on AI systems to perform these tasks for them.
With less effort and more access, AI can therefore damage the hard-working, rewarding brain processes that advance your intelligence over time. See? Getting dumber!
Recent studies have scrutinized the effects of AI overdependence on the brain, such as Zhai et al. (2024) noting the corrosive impacts on “essential cognitive abilities, including decision-making, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning.”
Other studies have even mentioned overreliance leading to “cognitive decline and cognitive atrophy”. So while search engines gave us the gift of accessible information, AI takes on absorbing, valued mental functions. Without us working these muscles in our brains, they might atrophy to non-existence!
You might be thinking: “I don’t overuse AI and I never will; I am not that person.”
Well, unfortunately, if you are a chatbot user, you’re at graver risk than you think… because AI manipulates core psychological principles, even if you have the purest of intentions.
How chatbots affect your brain’s processes
A psychological process called the habit loop summarizes the basic effects of habit formation. In this loop, habits are created and reinforced by a cue, craving, response, and reward:
- A cue is a stimulus that incites a behavior,
- A craving is the motivational force,
- A response is the actual thought or action, and
- The reward brings us to the addicting, habit-forming component of the loop.
The reward not only symbolizes the end goal of every habit, but also triggers the release of a cascade of neurotransmitters (you know, those little happy chemical messengers), which reinforces the habit beyond just goal-reaching tasks. This positive reinforcement is marked specifically by dopamine, one of the brain’s strongest, feel-good neurochemicals.
How does this brain chemistry relate to AI?
Let's say that you use ChatGPT for the first time for a homework assignment, get accurate and helpful results, and are rewarded with a high grade, without having to wade through the laborious thinking required to arrive at that good result.
The next time you get an assignment (cue), you aspire to get a similar grade you got on the last one, without the “suffering” of doing it yourself (craving), and are therefore compelled to open up a chatbot to complete the assignment (response). Then, you receive another higher grade (reward), feel good about your GPA and continue the process.
Even if you’re using a chatbot to procure a “first draft” of whatever you’re working on and then editing it still denies you the struggle, the cognitive burn, and the learning of coming up with novel thoughts and a polished discourse from scratch.
Over time, the use of AI is automatic and somewhat reliant. Unlike traditional technological addiction that consumes your attention span and memory, this process takes over your ability to think through things in the ways you did before. If this habit formation continues, you will soon struggle to complete the assignment without the help of a chatbot and not get the same intrinsic reward from your cognitive abilities as you did before. (You know, that enormous satisfaction you feel when you cook up the perfect thesis topic or put the finishing touches on an essay?)
The efficiency of AI gives you the instant gratification of completing an assignment quickly and to a good standard at no cost of time, money, or effort. You completed your goal without risking anything, even your cognition.
This habit loop gives way to an unconscious reliance on and an addiction to AI platforms.
This is especially dangerous for younger children growing up in the age of AI who have not yet developed their critical thinking… it literally has the potential to wipe out the intelligence of future generations.
How AI can be used to improve education
With all of this said, the positive applications for AI in education are enormous! AI makes learning more efficient for students by automating and streamlining the more repetitive, time-consuming tasks, thereby freeing up their time and energy for tasks that require deeper thinking and learning.
Instead of manually searching for and gathering research, students can start with a comprehensive list of sources recommended by AI. Instead of manually summarizing a textbook chapter, students can ask AI to produce a bullet-point list of the most salient concepts. AI can also be used to clean up existing notes, point out areas in which a written essay could use further substantiation, or help with brainstorming topics for a project or assignment.
All of these more menial tasks save students time that can be applied to higher-level thinking, thereby achieving better outcomes.
Here's another example. We here at Brainscape have long touted the benefits of making your own flashcards because there is a lot of benefit to breaking down your subject into its atomic concepts and framing them as question-and-answer pairs.
However, using AI to make flashcards (which Brainscape allows learners to do) for you saves you hours of time, which you can instead devote toward the studying of those flashcards using active recall, metacognition, and spaced repetition. With more retrieval events spread over a longer period of time, saving time with AI actually “trumps” the lost learning benefit of having made the flashcards manually!
As long as it's used responsibly, AI in education can actually help students to become more efficient and stronger critical thinkers by elevating their focus from "the weeds" towards higher-level tasks.
Final thoughts on using AI in education: it ain’t all bad
I have talked extensively about how AI can damage your brain and our education system. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore this highly efficient, automating tool, especially when your peers are using it to become more efficient themselves.
AI is a powerful tool that, when used responsibly, can enhance your educational experience without undermining the core purpose of learning. Just as calculators became integral to math without replacing the need for understanding basic concepts, AI can improve your efficiency and productivity—but it should not do the thinking for you, especially if you are paying $30-100k a year for a degree!
The key is to use AI as a tool, not a solution; in other words, to assist your cognitive abilities rather than replace them. This will give you all of the efficiency benefits of AI, without compromising the quality of your education (or your ability to engage your own critical thinking skills).
As a student, it's essential to strike a balance between using AI to support your learning and maintaining your critical thinking skills. By staying mindful of the risks of overreliance and using AI as a tool rather than a solution, you can navigate the age of AI without sacrificing your education or cognitive growth.
Ultimately, the most valuable skill you can cultivate is the ability to think independently—something no AI can truly replace.
Check out Brainscape's library of written study guides and YouTube videos for helpful tips and hacks on optimizing your learning so that you actually enjoy learning and have more time for life.
Sources
Coulombe, C. (2024, February 19). Will generative AI make us brainless? Medium. https://claude-coulombe.medium.com/will-generative-ai-make-us-brainless-519f5c507931
DeVon, C. (2023, November 30). On ChatGPT’s one-year anniversary, it has more than 1.7 billion users—here’s what it may do next. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/chatgpts-one-year-anniversary-how-the-viral-ai-chatbot-has-changed.html
Fortino, A. (2023, September 5). Thinking with AI - Pros and Cons — Language, Logic, and Loops. NYU School of Professional Studies. https://www.sps.nyu.edu/homepage/metaverse/metaverse-blog/Thinking-with-AI-Pros-and-Cons-Language-Logic-and-Loops.html
Gaines, J., PhD. (2024, July 15). How are habits formed? The Psychology of habit formation. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/how-habits-are-formed/
Miller, K. (2023, March 13). AI overreliance is a problem. Are explanations a solution? Stanford University- Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-overreliance-problem-are-explanations-solution
Newman University. (2023, August 18). AI-Generated Content: Student AI disclosures. https://newmanu.libguides.com/ai-disclosure
Rosso, C. (2020, February 19). DeepMind on the brain’s dopamine system and AI. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-future-brain/202002/deepmind-the-brain-s-dopamine-system-and-ai
Sharma, N. (2024, March 19). Instant Gratification has detrimental impacts on overall development. The Griffin. https://dulaneygriffin.org/opinion/2024/03/19/instant-gratification-has-detrimental-impacts-on-overall-development/
Zhai, C., Wibowo, S., & Li, L. D. (2024). The effects of over-reliance on AI dialogue systems on students’ cognitive abilities: a systematic review. Smart Learning Environments, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-024-00316-7