I love AI. As a developer, I've tested everything—GPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, you name it. I've even orchestrated multiple AIs within workspaces using MCP, letting them collaborate with tools. AI has genuinely revolutionized how I approach programming problems. But working with AI has made me more intentional about when to rely on it versus when to think through problems myself. I'll use it for grunt work—the repetitive coding tasks where I know exactly what needs to be done—so I can focus my mental energy on the complex implementations that actually require creative problem-solving. **The key difference? I never let it do my thinking for me.** Watching education systems worldwide allow AI during finals? That has me genuinely concerned about the future of human intelligence. Denmark just greenlit students using ChatGPT during final exams. Italy, the UK, Germany, and several U.S. states are running similar experiments. This isn't about using AI as a learning tool—it's about **replacing the learning process entirely**. **The shift is stark**: Exams no longer test what you know, but how well you can prompt an AI to know it for you. ## 🚆 The Train Ride That Sparked This This Friday, on my train ride home after a long week of work, a student sat next to me working on her **CIS Security & Risk Management thesis**. For thirty-five minutes, I watched her run an academic assembly line: 1. **Type question into GPT-5** 2. **Copy response** 3. **Paste into thesis** 4. **Repeat** > This wasn't learning. This wasn't critical thinking. It was outsourcing her entire thought process. When and _if_ she graduates and faces a real cybersecurity crisis, will she think independently? Or will she be paralyzed without her AI co-author? ## 🧠 Why This Should Worry You Look, I'm a huge AI advocate. I think we should absolutely embrace it—but **responsibly**. Allowing AI during classes and finals isn't innovation; it's a collision course for critical thinking and human reliability. **My biggest fear?** We're surrendering our ability to think and invent. Our ancestors didn't have AI, computers, or even basic tools—yet they survived and built everything we have today through pure human ingenuity. If we lose that fundamental capacity to reason through problems ourselves, what happens when the power goes out? Critical thinking isn't just getting the right answer. It's: - **Understanding the journey** from question to solution - **Recognizing when something feels off** - **Making unexpected connections** - **Building mental muscle** through struggle AI is sophisticated pattern matching—it predicts what should come next based on data. But **it's wrong more often than we admit**, hallucinates facts, and creates fictional citations. > **The danger?** Skip the reasoning process, and you won't have the mental muscles when AI isn't available—or when it's confidently wrong. ## 🌍 The Global Reality Check Early results from AI-in-education experiments: 🇮🇹 **Italy**: Students submit polished work but **can't explain their reasoning** 🇬🇧 **UK**: Productivity up, but students **can't explain their own work** 🇩🇪 **Germany**: Universities struggle with **"plagiarism-by-proxy"** 📉 **Everywhere**: Heavy AI reliance creates **decreased confidence** in own abilities ## 🛡️ Embrace AI, But Draw the Line **I'm all for AI adoption**—it's transformative technology that can enhance human capability. I use it for grunt work so I can focus on complex problem-solving. But there's a crucial difference between using AI as a tool and letting it replace fundamental thinking skills. **AI should be used for understanding and learning opportunities, not for solving everything it's asked.** The classroom during exams should be where we prove we can still think independently. | ❌ **Avoid** | ✅ **Do This** | |-|-| | "Write my essay" | "Challenge my argument with counterpoints" | | Copy-paste responses | Use AI for research, think for yourself | | AI does analysis | AI finds sources, you form opinions | ### 🧠 **Keep Your Edge Sharp** - Practice thinking without AI regularly - Question AI outputs critically - Work through problems step-by-step yourself - Read complex material without AI summaries ## 💭 Bottom Line The future belongs to those who can **leverage AI while strengthening their own thinking**. We should embrace AI everywhere it makes sense—in the workplace, for research, for creativity. But the classroom during exams? That's where we draw the line and say human thinking still matters. GPS made us lose our sense of direction. Don't let AI make you lose your sense of reasoning. > **The real magic happens when human curiosity meets machine capability—and the human still leads the dance.** *Keep questioning. Keep reasoning. Your future self will thank you.*