Research Note #2
The Day AI Made Me Question My Own Thinking
A few days ago I opened ChatGPT to help me organize an essay.
Within minutes I had a clearer outline.
A stronger structure.
A more compelling flow of ideas.
The argument was still mine.
The examples were still mine.
The conclusions were still mine.
In many ways, the process had become more efficient.
Then I closed my laptop.
Not because the work was finished.
Because I found myself wondering something I hadn't expected.
Had I wrestled with these ideas enough?
That question has stayed with me.
Not because I think AI is replacing human intelligence.
I don't.
I use AI every day.
It has made me a more efficient and organized researcher and writer.
It helps me organize complex ideas.
It helps me explore alternative perspectives.
It helps me communicate more clearly.
Those are genuine advantages.
But the experience left me wondering about something deeper.
What role does intellectual struggle play in developing our thinking?
For much of my career, I've studied how people learn.
One lesson has appeared again and again.
Learning rarely comes from receiving an answer.
It comes from wrestling with a question.
From living with uncertainty.
From revising what we thought we knew.
From slowly making an idea our own.
That is a very different process from simply producing an answer.
I think this is where the conversation about AI needs to change.
Instead of asking whether AI can think for us, perhaps we should ask a different question.
What kinds of intellectual struggle should we never give up?
Perhaps thinking is not the destination.
Perhaps meaning is.
If AI helps us organize information more efficiently, then our responsibility becomes making sense of that information, deciding what we believe, and acting intentionally.
That is where agency begins.
For more than twenty years my research has explored how people develop agency through learning.
Today, I believe the conversation needs to become broader.
The defining challenge of the AI era is not simply building more intelligent machines.
It is ensuring that, as those machines become more capable, we continue to cultivate the deeply human capacities that allow us to make meaning, exercise judgment, and live intentionally.
Perhaps the defining question of our time is not:
What can AI do?
Perhaps it is:
What parts of intellectual struggle should remain uniquely human?
I think that's the conversation worth having.
Dig Deeper
This essay draws on ideas from my research on learner agency, postdigital learner agency, and artificial intelligence in education.
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