Teachers Warn That Students Are Losing the Ability to Think as They Lean on AI for Everything

image via futurism.com
image via futurism.com

Students across the country are using AI models to complete assignments and write entire essays. Some of this constitutes cheating, but in many cases schools are allowing students to make some use of AI tools. This is a slippery slop. As some experts argue, any intrusion of automation into the writing process isn’t just threatening students’ composition skills, but their entire ability to think.

https://futurism.com/future-society/students-lose-ability-think-ai

To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain

image via arstechnica.com
image via arstechnica.com

But since the appearance of ChatGPT, the instructor’s job isn’t just to teach the subject and frantically attempt to keep every student’s plate spinning. Increasingly, it’s to moonlight as a detective and prosecutor because students without the motivation to do the work don’t have to skip it anymore. They can turn in a work-shaped simulacrum almost as easily. And a substantial number do—in a recent College Board survey of 600 high school students, 84 percent said they had used generative AI for schoolwork.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/to-teach-in-the-time-of-chatgpt-is-to-know-pain/