The AI Trap in Higher Ed

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) language model that generates human-like responses, currently serves about 400 million people weekly, but that number will probably drop once schools let out for the summer. That’s because nearly 90% of students have reportedly admitted – in more than one survey – that they use chatbots to help with their schoolwork. These AI-powered bots can check grammar, write outlines, locate research, and summarize text, among other things. Yet many rely on them to write 80% or more of their school papers.

Many describe this as cheating that defeats the purpose of attending school, though nowadays it seems young adults go to college only in hopes of landing a decent job. They want a diploma, not knowledge. In the end, students falling back on AI might suffer the most and they probably don’t even realize it.

AI Dependence

A couple of months after ChatGPT was introduced to the public in 2023, “a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used [a] chatbot to help with homework assignments,” explained New York magazine. “Professors and teaching assistants increasingly found themselves staring at essays filled with clunky, robotic phrasing that, though grammatically flawless, didn’t sound quite like a college student — or even a human.”

Students at universities and higher-ed schools across the globe are depending on AI to skate through “every facet of their education,” explained New York. Generative-AI chatbots – such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot – “take their notes during class, devise their study guides and practice tests, summarize novels and textbooks, and brainstorm, outline, and draft their essays.”

In 2024, the Digital Education Council surveyed nearly 4,000 students across 16 countries, and 86% said they used artificial intelligence in their studies. The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), a think tank in the UK, surveyed more than 1,000 full-time undergraduates, and 92% admitted to using some form of AI, nearly 30% higher than in 2024.

Sam Williams, a former teaching assistant at the University of Iowa, told New York that “at least half his students were using AI to write their papers.” The professor told him to grade the assignments as if they were a “true attempt at a paper” because it was a “slippery slope” trying to prove students were using AI.

‘It Changes Everything’

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University released a study in which they surveyed more than 300 knowledge workers to examine how and when they use AI to determine its influence on their ability to think critically. It turns out, the more the workers turned to AI, the less critical thinking they employed. They instead focused more on “information verification, response integration and task stewardship.”

Another study, this one by Michael Gerlich at SBS Swiss Business School in the UK, found that “increased reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) tools is linked to diminished critical thinking abilities,” explained Phys.org, a website dedicated to science.

What can teachers do? It’s difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that students are using chatbots to cheat, but the technology’s threat to critical thinking doesn’t apply only to students cutting corners or cheating to pass classes. Many people lean on AI for task efficiency, such as summarizing and editing emails, which still endangers cognitive development. Worse, artificial intelligence has seeped into our daily lives and is now integrated with phones and browsers. And the more often people hand off cognitive duties to AI, the more likely they are to reduce their ability to think critically, retain memories, and solve problems.

AI chatbots will probably remake society and culture regardless of what people do, but how much it alters us as human beings depends on how much we’re willing to give up for convenience and ease. Soon the urge to do less work will turn into the desire to do as little as possible – until the desire dies and thinking becomes a lost art.

1. Nearly 90% of students have reportedly admitted that they use chatbots to help with their schoolwork.
2. AI-powered bots can check grammar, write outlines, locate research, and summarize text, among other things.
3. The more often people hand off cognitive duties to AI, the more likely they are to reduce their ability to think critically, retain memories, and solve problems.