By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-03-15 16:52:00
The frustration that many academics express about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (“I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff”: Professors fight to save critical thinking in the age of AI, March 10). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks obscuring a problem that universities have been living with for years.
In my work with students, I have long seen how thinking can be externalized when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared essays from the past, sample essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behavior. It simply industrialized an abbreviation that already existed.
In my view, AI has highlighted how fragile the traditional coursework-style essay has always been as an indicator of intellectual engagement. If a text can be written convincingly without any thought behind it, the problem is…
