30/08/2026
๐๐๐๐๐๐ | ๐๐ง๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ ๐ ๐๐ ๐ซ๐๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ
There is an hour left before class ends.
The professor gives an exercise, open book and open notes. As students begin working through the problems, it does not take long before they reach for their phones, turning to their handy, all-knowing phantom classmate, ChatGPT. The question is typed, a picture of the problem attached, and within seconds, an answer.
I am sure this is a familiar scene to a lot of us. In just a span of two to three years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a looming presence in our classrooms, regardless of whether it was welcome or not. Now we are encouraged to use these tools to assist our learning, to maximize our own potential by maximizing AIโs potential, matching the pace of industries where adapting to emerging technologies has become the competitive advantage.
I feel like I have gone through the five stages of grief when it came to AI: from denial, to varying shades of frustration, and finally to begrudging acceptance. In my head, as long as a majority of the work and thought process was mine, I could feel less guilty about it.
In an environment where it was clear the results mattered more than whether or not actual effort was put into it, to remain stubbornly sincere about โputting in the workโ seemed ridiculous at this point. Who can say if our professors would give extra marks if we spent three hours writing a paper versus someone who spent 15 minutes on it? Would they be able to tell?
I would be blatantly lying if I denied how useful AI could be. It is capable of exponentially improving our work speed and reducing our workload, something students constantly trying to balance academics, organizations, personal responsibilities, and whatever is left of our time could genuinely benefit. In this way, it could even help us find some semblance of work-life balance and serve as a crutch to hold us up when the weight of everything else becomes too much.
And yet.
And yet, I could not help but wonder how many of us would be able to pass our exams, our courses, without AI.
They say the struggle of a butterfly leaving its chrysalis is an essential part of its process, strengthening and preparing its wings for flight. When it is our turn to leave the chrysalis of our university, how many of us would flutter in the wind, and how many would start dropping like flies?
How many of us would actually have the knowledge and skills that are expected of our degrees, and how many would graduate with special thanks to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude?
Learning can be extremely frustrating. You could read the same material repeatedly and still not understand half of it, solve a problem incorrectly in a multitude of ways before finally getting the correct answer. Somewhere between the mistakes and repetition, we develop the ability to get to the answer on our own.
Then what happens when we begin skipping that part? How many skills are we leaving undeveloped because we were taught to use AI for them from the get-go? What happens to basic skills like critical thinking, analysis, problem and conflict resolution, and creativity, when we are constantly given something that could do these things for us?
From my perspective as a student, all I can see is that we are at the losing end of this seemingly one-sided battle. We are in so deep that an unplugged router, slow signal, or lack of mobile data renders some of us semi-functional. Although I remain optimistic that not all of us would end up this way, that somewhere along the way, we would still learn when to put the phone down and work through the problem ourselves.
AI is not going anywhere, and perhaps the responsibility now falls on us to make sure we are not losing ourselves in the process. So to you, who is still reading at this point, after this ramble and never-ending questions, Iโd like to ask: when the Wi-Fiโs turned off, is your brain still on?
Column by Nikki Novales
