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Educators are raising concerns over declining cognitive skills among students due to AI use. While assignments appear polished, deeper understanding is lacking. Experts suggest balanced AI use, discussions, and new assessment methods.

One of the biggest challenges before educators in current times is the decline of cognitive ability among students with the rise of AI. But the biggest difficulty is the deceptive nature of the problem; answers are all correct, assignments have improved in content, and the presentations are much more elegant than ever before. But the moment we as educators interact with the students and try to assess depth of their understanding, there appears to be problems and they falter. The deeper we go, more we find their lack of understanding. And that tells the whole story of decline of cognitive ability.

Problem Statement:

Not that the problem did not exist earlier. It did in the earlier era of newly invented world of internet and Google search as well. The only difference during that time and the current world of AI is in the “nature” and “scope” of availability of easy solutions. In Google search era, the primary information search was limited to “what” of content. The world of AI has created readymade solutions of “how” and “why” aspects as well. And if a technology platform can answer to all three aspects of cognitive traits namely, “what”, “how” and “why”, very little remains to be done at the said space. Then AI can answer all questions, and a student can, through AI, get easy answers and solutions for all issues / problem points, possibly at all learning levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This development has, in recent times, created the biggest worry for educators.

While in this democratic world the students cannot be denied the right to use AI, how to ensure that cognitive ability is kept intact, and students learn the concepts and applications thereof so that they become “employable” as well as “good thinking individuals” is the big challenge before the educators.