Throughout history, education has repeatedly made the same mistake: treating new tools as threats rather than as extensions of human capability. Today, artificial intelligence is being framed by many academic institutions not as a learning aid, but as a form of intellectual shortcut or even misconduct. This resistance is not only misguided, it risks leaving students less prepared for the real world they are about to enter.
We have been here before.
When Calculators Were "Cheating"
When electronic calculators first appeared in classrooms, they were quickly banned. Educators worried that students would forget how to do math, lose numerical intuition, or rely on machines instead of thinking. These concerns were well-intentioned, but fundamentally flawed.
Fast forward to today: scientific calculators are not just allowed - they are required. Middle and high school curricula assume students own one. Advanced math courses teach how to use calculators effectively, not whether they should be used at all. The emphasis shifted, correctly, from manual arithmetic to higher-level problem solving, conceptual understanding, and real-world application.
No serious educator today argues that banning calculators would make students better mathematicians.
AI is now standing at the same inflection point.
AI Is a Tool, Not a Substitute for Thinking
The fear surrounding AI in academia centers on misuse: students outsourcing their thinking, generating essays without understanding them, or bypassing the learning process entirely. These concerns are valid - but they are not an argument against AI itself. They are an argument for instruction.
Using AI to clean up a document, improve clarity, or identify structural weaknesses is not fundamentally different from asking a tutor for feedback or using grammar-checking software. Having AI fact-check sources, summarize dense material, or flag logical inconsistencies enhances comprehension rather than replacing it.
In professional environments, these tools are already commonplace. Students who graduate without understanding how to work alongside AI will be at a disadvantage compared to those who do.
Academia’s job is not to preserve difficulty for its own sake. It is to teach judgment, critical thinking, and mastery - skills that become more important, not less, when powerful tools are available.
The Wrong Line Is Being Drawn
Most current policies attempt to draw a simple line: AI use is either forbidden or reluctantly tolerated. This binary framing is the core error.
The correct distinction is not whether AI is used, but how it is used and whether the student can demonstrate understanding. A student who uses AI to refine an argument they can defend orally has learned. A student who submits generated content they cannot explain has not, and that failure would become obvious in any properly designed evaluation.
The solution is not prohibition, but transparency and literacy.
Just as students are taught when a calculator is appropriate, when mental math is required, and how to verify results, they should be taught when AI assistance is appropriate, how to validate AI outputs, how to detect errors or hallucinations, and how to remain accountable for the final work.
Preparing Students for Reality, Not the Past
Outside academia, AI is not optional. It is already being used for document review, software development, legal research, medical triage, finance, engineering, and scientific analysis. Employers are not asking whether graduates avoided AI; they are asking whether they know how to use it responsibly and effectively.
By pretending AI does not exist, or by criminalizing its use, educational institutions are not protecting academic integrity. They are delaying necessary adaptation and widening the gap between formal education and real-world practice.
The role of academia has never been to freeze technology at a comfortable moment. Its role has been to absorb new tools, discipline their use, and elevate the level of thinking that follows.
How I Use AI
I personally went from rarely engaging with AI to using it as a practical, everyday tool to support my work. I use it to clean up my writing, refine and expand outlines, research topics before drafting - specifically requesting citations to reduce errors and hallucinations - turn long-form articles into clear abstracts, format documents consistently, proofread for clarity and tone, and carefully fact-check my own assumptions. At no point does this replace thinking or authorship; the ideas remain mine, the responsibility remains mine, and the final judgment always rests with a human. Used this way, AI does not weaken the learning or writing process - it strengthens it.