> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.bontehmagazine.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Is AI Making Our Children Smarter or Just Lazier? - URL: https://www.bontehmagazine.com/is-ai-making-our-children-smarter-or-just-lazier/ - Published: 2026-09-14T16:48:13.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-14T16:48:13.000Z - Description: Is AI making our children smarter, or is it simply making everything so easy that they no longer have to develop the muscles required to think? - Author: Emmanuel Cobbi - Tags: AI I sometimes think about the projects we did in school before artificial intelligence became the answer to almost everything. You would be given a topic that sounded far too big for your age, and somehow you were expected to turn it into what looked like a small book. You went looking for textbooks, borrowed notes, asked teachers questions, copied references, crossed out entire pages, and occasionally discovered, halfway through the work, that you had been researching the wrong thing. It was stressful. Sometimes it was ridiculous. But you did the work. I remember writing projects with my own hands, page after page, trying to organize ideas that did not always make sense when they first entered my head. Looking back now, I realize something interesting: perhaps the assignment was never the most important thing we were doing. The finished project was simply evidence that we had gone through the process. Today, a child can receive the same assignment and ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or another AI model to produce an outline, write the chapters, summarize the research, generate references, and even prepare the presentation. In a few minutes, they can hold something that would previously have taken us weeks. And that raises an uncomfortable question. **Is AI making our children smarter, or is it simply making everything so easy that they no longer have to develop the muscles required to think?** The strange thing is that, for years, we have been worrying about the dramatic dangers of artificial intelligence. [Scientists](https://safe.ai/?ref=bontehmagazine.com) and technology leaders have warned about autonomous systems, misinformation, job displacement and, in the most extreme conversations, whether sufficiently powerful AI could eventually pose an existential risk to humanity. More than 700 researchers and public figures signed a statement arguing that mitigating the risk of human extinction from AI should be treated as a global priority. Those are serious conversations, and they deserve attention. But while we are busy asking whether AI might one day become too intelligent for humanity to control, perhaps we should also ask a smaller and more immediate question. **What happens if we become too comfortable letting it think for us?** The [OECD's *Digital Education Outlook 2026*](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-digital-education-outlook-2026%5F062a7394-en.html?ref=bontehmagazine.com) offers an important warning. Its review of emerging research found that students using general-purpose AI can produce better work without necessarily learning more. In some studies, the advantage disappeared and sometimes reversed when students were later tested without AI. The OECD warns that excessive cognitive offloading can create what it calls “metacognitive laziness” and disengagement. That phrase, *metacognitive laziness*, is probably closer to what worries me than ordinary laziness. A child is not necessarily lazy because they use the easiest tool available. Human beings have always done that. We invented calculators because calculating was difficult, cars because walking was slow, and search engines because finding information took time. The danger begins when the tool removes the very struggle that was teaching us something. A recent [MIT Media Lab study](https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/?ref=bontehmagazine.com) on essay writing found significant differences between participants who relied on large language models, search engines, and their own thinking. The researchers reported lower neural connectivity and weaker ownership of written work among the LLM group, although the study itself also calls for deeper research into the long-term effects of AI dependence. This does not mean we should ban AI from schools and pretend the future is not arriving. That would be equally foolish. OpenAI itself has introduced [Study Mode](https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-study-mode/?ref=bontehmagazine.com), designed to guide students through questions step by step rather than simply handing them answers. The principle behind it is important: AI can be a tutor, a challenger, and a thinking partner instead of a machine that quietly completes the assignment while the student watches. Perhaps that is the balance we need. Let children attempt the problem first. Let them struggle with the essay before asking AI to improve it. Let them research before asking a chatbot to summarize the subject. Then let AI show them what they missed. The future will absolutely belong to people who know how to use artificial intelligence, but it may even belong more to those who can recognize when the artificial intelligence is wrong. The children growing up today will have access to more intelligence than any generation before them. They can ask questions that bring together the knowledge of libraries, experts, and databases within seconds. That is an extraordinary advantage. We just have to make sure that, somewhere beneath all those answers, there is still a child learning how to produce a thought of their own.