As students, teachers, and schools begin another academic year, one technology that is guaranteed to be at the center of the educational pursuit, like it or not, is artificial intelligence. Since 2022, widespread use of generative AI and chatbots has upended the educational landscape and dramatically altered how learning is approached and achieved.
Some school districts are banning the use of AI in their schools while the effects of it are further studied. New York City recently announced a moratorium on AI use in K-12 classes for the 2026-2027 school year. One of the broadest responses nationally so far, the move means younger students will enjoy screen-free learning, while older students will undergo AI literacy training and have limited access to AI programs. In the announcement, NY Schools Chancelor Kamar Samuels touched on what’s at stake for learning in the Age of AI:
We’re putting guardrails in place to protect the human connection, curiosity and creativity that help children grow. We’re standing firmly in our belief that innovation does not mean more technology, and over the next year, we will lead with evidence to make sure technology serves learning — not the other way around.
Other districts, such as Cleveland, are carefully embracing AI and hoping their policies encourage students to use it as a supplement, not a replacement, for their learning.
Regardless of the district approach taken, though, students will quickly find ways to circumvent the limits that schools, teachers, and even parents apply to AI use unless they are given the chance to understand why such limits will benefit them.
Let’s review a few of the most important reasons students should limit their use of generative AI, the AI models that offer up images, videos, and text in response to queries (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and the like). Go over these with your own kids and forward this to other parents. Do what you can to help students starting a new school year to grasp what hangs in the balance. It’s not about taking something away. It’s about ensuring we bring something forth. It’s about unleashing our own power and ability as human beings. We all need to do it, but our school-age children need to learn to do it most of all.
Do It or Lose It
Whether it’s writing an essay, organizing a project, telling a story, researching a topic, or completing an assignment, if a student doesn’t rely on her own intellect to complete the task, the task doesn’t get learned. Unfortunately, in mass education, grades take on an outsized role in determining student progress. For students, that often translates to grades being a mere obstacle to overcome in order to get through school. And since we humans tend to want to take the easy way out when it’s available, students see AI as a tool to complete work, check the box, and get the desired grade.
Learning is essentially the challenging and developing of one’s own unique intellect. There’s no shortcut for that. With time and effort, we can absorb new material and make it uniquely ours by probing it internally and responding to it externally. Essays, finished projects, and completed assignments are evidence of that learning process. But if students lean heavily on AI to do the leg work in this process, little actual learning happens. That doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all the student himself.
Building Dependence
The more we use something, the more we desire to use it, and the more it gets used. The use becomes habitual, and unless we curb the habit or adjust it, it remains. But it’s not just human nature that compels students’ frequent use of AI. A 2025 study in IEEE journal reported a “statistically significant positive relationship between the frequency of AI tool use and students’ perceived usefulness of these tools.” In other words, the more a student thinks AI helps them in their school tasks, the more the student will turn to it. This dependence on AI in learning is broken only by the student herself willfully choosing to limit or avoid using AI when completing school work.
Relationship Risk
Persistent conversations with AI chatbots teach students to expect immediate answers, sweeping affirmation, and frictionless interactions. But that’s not how human relationships work. They take time, they’re messy, and they require effort to cultivate and maintain. Students who get used to AI chatbots in their formative learning years may suffer relationally as adults.
In her upcoming book Artificial Intimacy, Dr. Sherry Turkle, a pioneer in human-technology relationships, argues that an ever-increasing dependence on human-like AI chatbots erodes our capacity for empathy and caring. We end up forgetting what real human intimacy is and how to pursue it. No parents want this for their students, but we need to help students themselves understand that sustained AI use will impact their ability to connect with people in the future. Almost nothing could be more important to learn than that.
More Power to You
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we cannot harness and unleash our own creative power and energy if we let AI be creative for us. The God of the universe is literally waiting for us to utilize the tremendous creative power with which He has bestowed us. It’s a fathomless well of creative energy we can use to think novel ideas, build new things, and bring light and love into our own life and the lives of others. As I’ve argued recently in the Chicago Tribune, AI is not truly creative. Its ability to recognize patterns and produce written responses is not true creative action, it’s the amalgamation of human creativity rendered into language patterns we normally associate with intelligence. Impressive, but illusory.
No one else can harness creative power and manifest it through our personal intellect in original and unique ways. That job is ours individually, and ours alone. This school year, let’s encourage the students in our lives to unleash themselves creatively in their learning. The dividends, though not immediately evident, alas, are enormous. And who doesn’t like returns on their investment?
Not Just Another Tool
I’ll close with one more thought. There are those who consider AI a neutral tool that can be used for ill or good depending on the user’s preference. I’ve explained elsewhere why technology is actually not a neutral tool. There are human costs to every use of every technology. Some may justify AI use by calling it a research tool that won’t inhibit our own creative output. Like a faster Google, perhaps, or a helpful research assistant. But for all the reasons just mentioned, unless we do the job ourselves, we lose parts of the learning journey, and we end up less equipped than if we had done the leg work ourselves. As I wrote this, I asked my 17-year-old daughter what she thought about the use of AI in learning. “I don’t think AI is necessary,” she stated. “There are search engines and you can do it yourself. Generative AI encourages you to take the easy way out.”
My advice to students? Do the work yourself. Or in cases of research or idea generation, lean on the work and perspectives of other human beings to inspire your own creativity. Don’t feel guilty if you use AI here and there in limited ways. But build good learning habits now that will serve you well as an adult. We don’t need machines to build strong, impressive intellects. We have everything we need to do that ourselves.
Cross-posted from The Human Adventure.