Like riding a bicycle

Blog post with references, posted on https://rebeccanordquist.edublogs.org/ on July 9 2026 Like many other fields, in education the AI (Artificial Intelligence) discussion is unavoidable. Some of us are trying to build GenAI-proof assignments, some are building in sanctions for the use of GenAI, some are embracing AI and all of its possibilities. We have seemingly endless discussions on AI and education, which are inevitably outdated by the time the discussion even happens given how fast AI is developing. I have found it difficult to find arguments that express just how much I dislike AI, and why. Never-skilling Recently, though, I read a few things that really hit home. First, a paper by Ke and colleagues (2026) that introduced me to the term “never skilling” in the context of AI in medical education: what happens when students are exposed to and use AI without first developing skills without the use of AI? For those of us who grew up and started careers in the pre-AI days, the use of AI can (and does) make us mentally lazy (Kosmyna et al 2025), known as “deskilling”, but in groups that have been trained without AI, the skills are in there, and presumably would return with use, like riding a bicycle. But what about the groups that never learned to ride? If the use of AI ingrained in first-year students (or high school and earlier) during writing, how will they learn to practice critical thinking skills? This “never-skilling” for me is a strong plea for AI-free assignments in early formative years, as suggested in Ke and colleague’s scaffolded learning. Appliances don’t save time But even for those of us who have learned the skills, I still dislike the use of AI because I do not believe it will save anyone's time. In now well-known and well-documented studies on the use of household appliances, the paradox appears that despite the appearance of washing machines, microwaves, freezers, dishwashers and the like, the amount of time spent on household tasks has not declined (Bittman et al, 2004). Having now seen what GenAI is doing to work flows including grant- and manuscript writing, and review processes- where sometimes, frustratingly, AI is proposed as a tool to expedite review of the overload of manuscripts (Hoyt et al 2025) which are, yes, largely at least partly produced by AI, and then summarized by AI so that no one has to actually read them. The same arguments are used for the use of AI to facilitate grading student assignments, which are produced at least in part by AI (Deepshikha 2025). All of this is intended, of course, to save time. But to save time for what? Producing articles faster using AI that AI then reviews and which people read AI summaries of, is not going to save us time. It is just going to produce more publications, not more knowledge. Having students use AI to produce assignments before “learning to ride the bike”, and then using AI to grade the assignments, is not going to get us deeper learning. The miraculous task of living The poem “For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano very much captures my feelings about this. From the sigh of understanding that your work is not the only thing students have going on, to the wish for engagement in living, “the miraculous task of it”, I would wish for my students a time without AI, to slow down, and to learn to ride the bike. References Bittman, M., Rice, J. M., & Wajcman, J. (2004). Appliances and their impact: The ownership of domestic technology and time spent on household work. The British Journal of Sociology, 55(3), 401–423. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00026.x Deepshikha, D. (2025). A comprehensive review of AI-powered grading and tailored feedback in universities. Discover Artificial Intelligence, 5(1), 251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-025-00517-0 Hoyt, R., Limon, A., & Chang, A. (2025). Generative AI and scientific manuscript peer review. Intelligence-Based Medicine, 11, 100246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibmed.2025.100246 Ke, Y., Jin, L., Ong, J. C. L., Thirunavukarasu, A. J., Car, J., Cheung, C. Y., Tham, Y. C., Ting, D. S. W., Ong, M. E. H., Compton, S., Narayan, A., Keane, P. A., Wong, T. Y., Bates, D. W., Tan, P., & Liu, N. (2026). AI-induced never-skilling in medical education. Nature Medicine, 32(6), 1997–2006. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04438-y Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X.-H., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (arXiv:2506.08872). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872 Fasano, J. (n.d.). For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper [Text]. Retrieved July 9, 2026, from https://poets.org/poem/student-who-used-ai-write-paper