Some A.I. tools are carefully designed for education and can help children follow their curiosity, fill in learning holes and help with learning differences.
Khan Academy’s A.I. tutor, Khanmigo, uses vetted education content to coach students on mastering new material without quickly giving them the answer. OpenAI claims study mode in ChatGPT works similarly.
But these tools stop being helpful when they start doing the thinking for children, which is how many young people are using A.I. When students put their essay prompts or problem sets into regular ChatGPT and it spits out perfect work, they are shortcutting their learning.
If the training wheels on a child’s bike kept the rider upright and pedaled and steered automatically, the child would most likely not learn to ride. When students use Gemini or DeepSeek to do their history homework for them, that’s what’s happening.
This is what researchers at M.I.T. recently found when they tested how A.I. affected writing skills.
They split university students ages 18 to 39 into three groups: One wrote with ChatGPT from the start; the second wrote on their own but could use Google search; and the third group was not allowed to use any tools. Later, all of the students revised their writing using ChatGPT to help.
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