AI Is Exposing What Is Already Fragile in Schools

A recent report from the NoSo Connection Collective suggests that young people using AI are increasingly experiencing what researchers Steven Shaw and Gideon Nave call “cognitive surrender”, defined as the gradual outsourcing of thinking, creativity, discernment, and intellectual struggle to AI systems. Young people in the study describe a growing loss of “the texture of learning, the authenticity of creative work, [and] the quality of human connection.” One participant reflected that AI had “diminished curiosity, the willingness to make mistakes and be wrong, and to learn from those moments and experiences.”

The concern is real. But AI did not create the conditions for cognitive surrender in schools. In many ways, it is exposing and accelerating dynamics that already existed.

For years, too many students have experienced learning environments that prioritize compliance over curiosity, speed over depth, and standardization over meaning-making. Students learn to ask: What does the teacher want? What answer earns the grade? What format checks the box? In systems heavily shaped by pacing guides, accountability pressures, and teaching to standards, learning can become more about efficient production than authentic intellectual engagement.

In these contexts, students are already conditioned to suspend thinking, creativity, and intellectual struggle. AI is not the match igniting cognitive surrender. It is the gasoline being poured on an already smoldering fire.

When students experience learning primarily as task completion, it is unsurprising that they would turn to tools capable of completing those tasks faster. Shaw and Nave’s new research found that individuals routinely accepted incorrect AI-generated answers with minimal scrutiny simply because the responses sounded fluent and authoritative. The danger is not simply plagiarism or overreliance on technology, but rather the erosion of intellectual agency and the weakening of our collective confidence and capacity to wrestle with ambiguity, synthesize ideas, generate original thought, and remain cognitively present in learning.

My niece, a college student who will enter the workforce next year, recently shared that she was on a break from AI because of how easy it was to hand over her hardest thinking to arrive at a quick answer.  She quipped, “It felt like it was making me dumber and lazier.”

I left the conversation concerned not only about cognitive surrender, but also the surrendering of a positive sense-of-self, particularly for young people who are still developing their confidence, judgment, and identity.  At GLISI, much of our deeper learning and leadership work affirms that learners become more activated when learning feels authentic, relational, and connected to problems that matter. These findings are not new; they are well established in research on how humans learn and grow.

Adults and students develop through experiences that require reflection, application, experimentation, feedback, and productive struggle. This does not mean AI has no place in learning. AI can support brainstorming, accessibility, simulation, inquiry, and feedback in powerful ways. But leaders must become far more intentional about how, where, and why AI is applied.

The Questions the Moment Demands 

The education leaders navigating this moment most thoughtfully are asking deeper questions:

• What kinds of learning experiences truly require human judgment and space for sense making?
• How do we design schools that activate curiosity rather than merely ensure compliance?
• How do we cultivate discernment, reflection, and intellectual stamina in an age of instant answers?
• What does an authentic demonstration of learning look like?

If schools are spaces for passive engagement with content through a screen or completion of worksheets, AI will only accelerate youth disengagement and further atrophy the very capacities schools are meant to develop: critical thinking, judgment, curiosity, adaptability, and self-direction. Ironically, these are the exact skills families and communities consistently name as what they hope schools will cultivate in graduates, alongside literacy, content knowledge, healthy social connection, and civic engagement. Yet too often, our incentive structures reward passive consumption and procedural correctness, producing young people who become experts at “student-ing,” but less practiced in learning, reflection, risk-taking, and productive struggle.

The challenge before schools is not simply whether students use AI. The deeper challenge is whether schools will redesign learning in ways that preserve and strengthen human agency in an era of increasingly intelligent machines.  In an AI era, the work of schools must but be about activating fully human learners: young people capable of thinking critically, creating meaningfully, collaborating deeply, navigating uncertainty, and contributing wisely in a world where information is abundant but discernment is increasingly rare.

References

NoSo Connection Collective. (2026). Youth & AI Report. Retrieved from https://www.nosonovember.org/youth-ai-research

Wharton Executive Education. (2026). Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificially: Cognitive Surrender in the Age of AI. Retrieved from https://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/thought-leadership/wharton-at-work/2026/05/thinking-fast-slow-and-artificially/