Is Artificial Intelligence killing critical thinking in the classroom?

DECODED: TECH, TRUTH, AND THREATS

By Art Samaniego

Lately, it feels like every other news report in the country is pointing fingers at AI. Headlines warning of declining student performance. Morning show segments featuring educators lamenting that critical thinking is “dying” due to AI tools like ChatGPT. Some even go as far as calling it the end of real learning.

And I get the concern, truly, I do. But we’re oversimplifying the issue. I disagree with the idea that AI is automatically harming students’ ability to think. Not inherently, anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way students use AI. You hear it all the time where professors worry about essays written by chatbots, and parents are unsure if their kids are actually learning or just submitting. And honestly, both camps have a point.

Yes, AI can affect a student’s ability to think critically. That much isn’t really up for debate. The more interesting question is: how does it affect them? Because the truth is, it goes both ways.

On the one hand, it’s easy to see how AI could erode critical thinking. You ask a chatbot for an answer, it spits one out, and boom, done. No wrestling with the question, no exploring ideas, no making mistakes and learning from them. It’s clean, efficient, and kind of empty.

If students become accustomed to outsourcing their thinking, they might as well stop developing the physical muscle altogether. It’s like lifting weights with a robot doing the reps for you.

There’s also the problem of shortcuts. Let’s be honest, school isn’t always inspiring. When students are tired or under pressure, the temptation to let AI “handle it” can be overwhelming. And if that becomes the norm? That spark of original thought, messy and unpredictable, deeply personal, starts to fade. You end up with work that’s technically correct but empty.

But that’s not the whole story.

And this is where it gets interesting: AI can also encourage students to think more deeply. I, for example, use AI to challenge my ideas, to see counterarguments I hadn’t considered, or even to draft an outline and then tear it apart to see what stands. It’s like having a debate partner who is always at your side. If you use it that way, the back-and-forth can actually sharpen your reasoning.

There’s something valuable about that feedback loop, too. Imagine writing a paragraph and asking AI, “What’s wrong with this?” You don’t have to agree with the critique, but even engaging with it forces you to think more deeply about what you’re trying to say. In a weird way, AI is a mirror. It reflects how you use it.

If you treat it like a tool to question, to iterate, to push yourself, it can be brilliant. If you treat it like a magic wand to avoid thinking, well, you already know how that ends.

Perhaps a better analogy is that AI is like a calculator. If you already know how to do the math, it makes you faster. If you’ve never understood the equations in the first place, it hides that fact for a while.

Yes, AI does affect critical thinking. That part is certain. Whether it strengthens or weakens it? That depends entirely on the person behind the screen.

As a teacher, I actually allow my students to use AI. That might sound counterintuitive at first, but there’s a reason behind it. If I only focus on the final output, whether it’s the essay, the answer, or the project, I don’t know if it came from the student’s own thinking or was entirely generated by a machine.

But here’s the thing. I’m also a certified AI practitioner. I’ve spent enough time working with these tools to recognize certain patterns. Most of the time, I can tell when a student has let AI do most of the work.

What I always do instead is ask, “How did you get here?” Walk me through your process. Why did you choose this approach? What were you thinking when you made that decision?

Because if you really want to unlock the full potential of AI in learning, you have to look at the process behind the output. That’s where the learning happens. Not in the final product, but in the decisions made along the way, the trial and error, the adjustments, and even the moments of uncertainty.