By Argh Jain
Open AI has released its GPT 5.0, Perplexity AI has put the offer to buy Google Chrome, Google Gemini can also now do better tasks with the latest upgrade in its model, Anthropic has launched a Claude AI agent that lives in Chrome, AI is now everywhere with capabilities to do tasks better than any undergraduate engineering college student. These are what called “agentic AI”- basically computer programs that don’t just wait for instructions but act also, handling things own their own without any supervision.
AI is advancing so rapidly that big companies have now started substituting human roles with agentic AI. For example, customer service jobs are being replaced by intelligent chatbots that not only answer queries but also resolve complaints end-to-end. In Finance, AI tools can now analyse data, generate reports and even make trading decisions faster than human employees. Marketing teams are using AI agents to run campaigns, monitor trends and adapt strategies in real time. This change signals both opportunity and threat, while efficiency and cost-cutting improve, human workers face the challenge of redefining their value.
While businesses use AI to replace manpower, students are turning to the same technology to handle academic tasks. A Bright CHAMPS survey (July 2025) found that approx. 63% of Indian students use AI regularly, primarily for academic tasks like homework and learning support. While about 78% of Gen Z regularly use tools like ChatGPT for assignments and content creation. At IIT Delhi, a survey showed 80% of students use generative AI tools- these are programs that can generate text, code or image for users, approx. 81% among them using these tools several times a week and about 10% subscribing to paid versions. This shows how deeply AI is already embedded in student life.
Behind these surveys lies a simple truth-AI has made studying easier and more accessible than ever before, it helps students quickly access the resources and provides new ways of learning. Earlier concepts which used to be difficult to understand can be made simpler with the assistance of AI, for many users, it is like a virtual tutor which can help them anytime, anywhere.
While AI may act like a helpful tutor, it can also quietly weaken the very skills education is meant to build, while these advantages are real, the growing dependence comes with hidden costs. The trend which is getting set among students would be scary in future as the tech is reducing the potential of critical thinking, logical reasoning and mathematics skills. The brain needs challenges the way muscles need weights, if AI keeps doing everything, then our mental fitness will fade away. It is now setting in the brains of students-why struggle when ChatGPT can do it in seconds. Relying too much on AI is like hypnotising your brain to follow as AI is saying. Assignments are no longer about learning-they’ve become just deadlines to meet. Students are not trying their best, not putting their 100% efforts in studies. With the surge in AI, attention and concentration span of students is decreasing at an alarming rate. Social media already drains attention, and now AI has joined as another distraction.
These concerns naturally lead us to ask some critical questions: were the students before the AI era the ‘real engineering students’-those who spent hours solving problems, finding resources on google links or digging into library books to find suitable resources? At what deep level AI is truly impacting us? What will be the future of technology if today’s students rely on AI for almost every task? Should we put limits on its usage or is this technology evolving our brain in a new way?
To truly understand how AI has reshaped our learning, let’s step back less than a decade. Let’s consider a student who enrolled in a B-Tech college back in 2016, when the teaching and learning process was almost the same as in the early 2000s. He attended lectures, made notes in physical notebooks and learned from professors teaching on white boards rather than relying on PowerPoint slides. As a beginner in coding, he might have understood only 50-60% of the lecture, which meant he had to revise, practice and struggle with the concepts on his own. With no AI tools to assist him, he turned to books, spent hours on finding relevant resources and built the understanding step by step. Each effort strengthened his concept, pushed him beyond the comfort zone and trained his brain to think critically and logically.
This comparison naturally leads us to a deeper reflection: what truly sets apart a student before the AI era from one living in it today? How did earlier students manage to come up with new ideas, solve problems, handle multiple tasks and even complete boring assignments on their own.
Was a tool like Chat GPT necessary back then or have we made ourselves more dependable on others? Why do we feel such a strong need for AI now-couldn’t the same tasks be done without it? Have we trained our mind to avoid thinking beyond our limits? Why is there such a hurry to finish work without effort, instead of treating academics as a process of true learning?
To avoid a future where humans would need assistance from AI tools in doing daily tasks, we must set the boundaries to limit the use of it. Especially in schools and colleges, the use of AI should be limited so that students continue to build critical thinking, problem-solving, and independent learning skills. Education has always been about the journey-struggling with concepts, asking questions and slowly arriving at answers. If we skip this process and let AI do everything, we risk losing the very abilities that education is meant to develop. Imagine relying on a calculator so much that we forget basic arithmetic; the same danger exists with AI for higher reasoning. If we hand over our thinking to machines entirely, one day we may realize that we have forgotten how to think for ourselves.
AI should remain our assistant, not become our replacement.
(The writer is a First Year B Tech Student Plaksha University, Mohali)
