Is AI dulling critical-thinking skills? As tech companies court students, educators weigh the risks

After Michael Gerlich published a study this year, his inbox was flooded. He got so many messages, mostly from teachers, he wondered about closing his account. This was unusual for the professor, who teaches at SBS Swiss Business School in Zurich, where he heads the rather staid-sounding Center for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability.The paper that triggered the response, published in a peer-reviewed journal called Societies, looked at the relationship between the use of generative artificial intelligence applications, such as ChatGPT, and critical-thinking skills. He had sensed during lectures that students didn’t seem to be thinking as deeply as they once had been, and wondered whether AI was playing a role. Judging from his inbox, he hadn’t been the only one.