Helen Pearson in Nature:
Yan, who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, was using an agentic AI called Codex to set up an online course on a learning-management platform. But it quickly became clear that the adept AI could independently complete all the assignments, answer questions and participate in discussions, “without the learner being intellectually engaged” at all, Yan says.
The experience made Yan think that teaching students to reason and think for themselves “is more critical than ever”, he says. And he is hardly alone. In a 2025 survey of more than 1,000 US faculty members, conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, 90% said they thought that generative AI will reduce students’ critical-thinking skills. Around 20% of higher-education students who use AI said that they already find it harder to work through problems without it, according to more than 8,000 respondents to a global survey this year.
More here.
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