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AI use could make us ‘subcognitive’
AI threatens students’ most basic skills. If they lose their ability to understand what they read, will they lose their ability to think?
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Cognitive degradation from AI use threatens our claim to self-rule, says the writer.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
Anastasia Berg
Last spring, it became clear to me that over half the students in my large general education lecture course had used artificial intelligence tools, contrary to my explicit policy, to write their final take-home exams. (Ironically, the course was titled Contemporary Moral Problems: The Value of Human Life.)
I had asked them about some very recent work in philosophy, parts of which happened to share titles with entirely different ideas in mediaeval theology. You can guess which topics the students ended up “writing” about.
