AI chatbots promise productivity and efficiency—but is efficiency really what classrooms need? The purpose of school is to educate students and teach them how to learn. In class, we want students to think, test ideas, and wrestle with problems until they uncover solutions. That slow, sometimes frustrating struggle is where real learning happens. Because AI is built to shorten tasks, it can tempt students to skip this formative stage. Given an easy shortcut, most of us will take it—and when assignments are only a prompt away from completion, the learning process suffers.
Deep understanding only emerges when students are challenged—and employers recognize this. When hiring, companies value domain-specific expertise—something developed over time through experience. Lately, they’ve been disproportionately hiring senior talent over entry-level college graduates. It’s not because senior professionals prompt chatbots better, but because they bring hard-earned expertise to the table.
Below are some visual statistics on recent hiring trends.
One expert sums it up: “It’s like going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.” Just as muscles grow only under strain, the brain needs cognitive resistance to develop. Unlimited AI assistance may remove that resistance.
It’s like going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.
- Stan Oklobdzija, Tulane University Professor
Assessments pose an even bigger challenge. Before ChatGPT, instructors could grade the words on the page knowing they came from the student. Now they can’t be sure. Lacking reliable originality tools, many professors are retreating to blue-book exams. According to The Wall Street Journal, sales of blue books have risen more than 30% at Texas A&M, nearly 50% at the University of Florida, and 80% at UC Berkeley over the past two academic years.
Clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Becky Kennedy describes the “learning space” as the area between not knowing and knowing—a zone filled with ups, downs, and frustration. It's only human to want to flee that uncomfortable space—and AI offers an irresistibly easy way out. But that escape comes at a steep cost: it strips away the depth, struggle, and true comprehension that real learning demands.
In this new AI era, schools must focus more the student journey of learning and strike a balance: using technology to support learning without letting it replace learning. Rumi’s AI Policy Playbook, discussed in an earlier post, offers one path. With Rumi, instructors set assignment-specific policies—from total prohibition to full permission with transparent logs of every prompt. The platform focuses on the writing process, not just the final product, so teachers can see where and how AI was used. Such tools allow educators to integrate technology without reverting to outdated methods, while still preparing students to think independently and succeed after graduation.
