AI tools like ChatGPT taking over our thinking?

Students’ near-constant use of AI highlights concerns over declining creativity, critical thinking, and reflective skills in higher education.

There is a noticeable degradation when it comes to critical thinking and reflection

Despite information accessibility being a positive there is a concern on how these skills are getting eroded. 

Educators should take responsibility, and get through to students about these concepts, so they don’t use AI in a way where their minds become “AI slob, literally.”

By Tahaan Jayewardene 

Sri Lankan students increasingly rely on AI tools like ChatGPT for academic work, often using them nearly 100% of the time. Educators warn this convenience may be eroding critical thinking, creativity, and reflection, urging students to treat AI as a tool, not a substitute for active learning and cognitive effort.  

Today, technology has become an integral part of not only our day-to-day functioning but has also started to take over our thinking. How this is impacting current generations of thinkers, especially the future of our society; young thinkers, is deeply concerning.   

Sri Lankan Gen-Z, and their reliance and dependence on AI, show how thinking patterns and our youth’s resilience may be impacted.   

A Sri Lankan student explains how relevant this issue is;   

“If you walk into the cafeteria and you see a laptop open, there’ll probably be a tab saying ChatGPT or AI.”   

Digging further into the issue of AI’s transformational impact on our brains and thinking, leading researchers, a Sri Lankan tech expert, and a local university student, highlight growing concerns of potentially serious cognitive and learning impacts of using AI like ChatGPT.   

An MIT study said that while LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs.   

“Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels,” the study said.   

These findings were concluded after studying three groups of students doing essay writing tasks, one group using only ChatGPT, one using only search engines, and one designated as “brain only.”   

“These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning,” concludes the study titled, Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (10 June 2025).   

Perhaps this study should inspire deeper consideration into the use of AI in our learning, it’s impact on our cognition, and our most important organ, the brain.   

Digestible definition 

A Cybersecurity & AI Policy Leader Asela Waidyalankara explained these complex tools.   

For those less familiar with technology, the rapid evolution of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) over the past two years has been driven by Natural Language Processing (NLP).   

This allows AI models to understand human language by converting it into code, a specialized language of its own.  
Basically an invention for translating human language into code or ‘tech language.’   

ChatGPT, (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), is an LLM that incorporates the generation of the text part of the process into its definition.  

The Impact

“LLMs are extraordinarily effective and important for students these days,” says Waidyalankara, offering valuable insight as an experienced educator.  

He mentions how the ease of which it can summarize information, make it become a coach of sorts, and use it for prep work (like doing quizzes) when studying.   

He mentions the flip side as well; the noticeable degradation when it comes to critical thinking and reflection, which we need a certain degree of along with our use of AI.   

Despite information accessibility being a positive, his concern is how these skills are getting eroded-because we skip out on traditional learning like reading books.  

The democratisation of AI, which happened when OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, he says “completely changed the game.”   

He explains that there were a multitude of factors that led to this shift, like the pandemic when students were forced to go into this virtual learning setup.  

In the context of a virtual learning environment, which can be somewhat overwhelming, the introduction of a highly useful tool helps explain this shift.”  

The catalyst is AI, he explains, while framing the complexity of this situation as “where you really see this degradation happening.”   

The first of which he mentions, is cognitive.   

Waidyalankara talks about how there’s a gap in discovery now because of how instantaneous getting results can be, referring to the input output method used in LMMs such as ChatGPT.   

He says how the learning process has very little friction due to the simplicity of this process.   

When comparing this to Google, which is just a search engine all these days, he mentions how at least then people were forced to read through the information to find what they were seeking, (and not just the first result) and digest the information.   

In the case of LLM’s, this process is often limited to the first result.   

This process is considerably smaller when compared to generations who went to the library and read books to learn.   

The second degradation he sees is a communication skills gap “especially with these new students,” he explains. He says that communication skills learnt in universities from presentations, which teach students skills for engaging with their audience for example, is missing, despite their content itself being good.  

“But still a lot of business happens between humans, you know, people to people.”  

He mentions for this particular set of graduates, interpersonal skills are missing.   

Adding on to this, he mentions in corporate settings, there’s a hesitation to take on Gen Z, which he says is because for them there is a far steeper learning curve than for previous generations.   

Which he says is partially because these tools have made their life easier and find handling “curveballs” more difficult.   

Student Perspective

A Sri Lankan university student, mentions how often they use ChatGPT. “If I’m being 100% honest, pretty much 100% of the time.”   

Although the resulting compromise on quality was understood, times of high workload led them to “use ChatGPT, at the very least, as a foundation” in their assignments.  

“Probably depend on it a bit too much now,” a student said explaining the ease of convenience and how quickly you can get information with “just one prompt.”  

The student adds that students might use ChatGPT, under the pretense that they start off with using it, and then build up their research by using normal search engines.  

“Honestly, most of the time, people just use ChatGPT or any other AI entirely.”   

Use the tool or become “AI slob”

Mr Waidyalankara says accessibility and convenience isn’t a bad thing, it’s that these tools aren’t being used purposefully.   

“This is where my bone of contention comes in,” he emphasizes.   

“I don’t take this mediaeval view,” he says, where “we struggled in the trenches and therefore you have to also struggle in the trenches.”   

 “That’s not the point, but being a little more purposeful is going to help you as a student, as an individual.”   

Although he does empathize with students’ choice for convenience, he does emphasize the importance of academic rigor even when it comes to the use of AI.   

He elaborates that this shift making things easier isn’t a bad thing, “but it’s how you use it.”  

“I don’t think we’ve done a good job of saying what this is useful for, how can you use it as a tool.”   

Educators should take responsibility, and get through to students about these concepts, so they don’t use AI in a way where their minds become “AI slob, literally.”   

“The problem is if you become over-reliant on them, you can be replaced. It’s a two-way street, how we are training AI and it’s also learning from us.”  

He adds the more we feed it, the better it becomes, and maybe with something it can do better than us.   

“Then you have to make sure that your core skills remain,” which he explains is where his suggestions for using it as a tool comes into play.  

“I always look at it as a tool,” he says and elaborates that it’s not a popular view.   

He says he does not condone the view that AI is the next big threat (which some educators have), instead reiterates the importance of learning to use it.   

Balance 

Referring to the over reliance of AI, and it’s impacts on creativity, he says “creativity, critical thinking, reflection, these are all like a muscle,” and the more you use it the better you get.   

“It’s that cognitive exercise that’s not there,” which he mentions is his issue, and how we use these tools to engage with information is very important.   

He says he even encourages students to use AI to create infographics, so they can engage with creating content based on their own research and points, or even AI tools like Notebook LM (so you can listen to books like you’re listening to a podcast).   

Then this becomes an enabler, he says rather than someone getting reliant on it.   

He mentions how even with social media and the internet, even with AI, we must not become over reliant on them, saying “you have to have stricter balance where you’re using them as a tool, to make your life easy.”   

Final Thoughts

We lose out on life when we allow technology to disrupt the potential for human-to-human interaction (and the cognitive benefits of it).   

We lose out on our own cognitive potential, when we use technology to substitute our thoughts, rather than learning to use it as a tool to boost that same potential - an interesting, perhaps subtle distinction.   

Those who balance this can gain the benefits of advanced technologies like AI, without comprising their own creativity and mental agility.   

Because as Waidyalankara says, creativity is a muscle. Possibly the most important muscle we have.   

It is up to us how we decide to use these tools. We can’t stop the relentless advancement of technology, but we can learn how best to use it.