Artificial intelligence has made student work look more polished, but that polish can hide a more serious problem in the classroom: the erosion of genuine thinking. Essays, journal summaries, and papers can now be finished in seconds, yet the ease of that process may weaken the intellectual effort that learning is meant to build.
The most visible change is not only faster submission. It is the growing habit of turning academic work into a short command to a machine, rather than a process of reading, weighing arguments, and shaping ideas step by step. In that shift, writing begins to look less like thinking and more like prompt design.
When understanding becomes an illusion
A major concern is the false sense of mastery that AI can create. A student can ask a system to summarize a book or journal article and then feel confident about the material without ever engaging fully with the original text.
That matters because reading is supposed to be a space for dialogue with ideas and for sharpening analysis. When AI cuts that process short, what often remains is only surface-level knowledge.
The issue is more serious in a context where deep reading is already a challenge. OECD data through the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, show that Indonesia’s reading literacy remains below the global average.
In that environment, AI’s quick summaries and instant answers become especially tempting. At the same time, they can lull users into thinking they understand more than they really do.
What gets lost when the machine answers first
Another effect is the weakening of intellectual curiosity. In education, confusion and the struggle to form an answer are important parts of how thinking develops.
But that habit starts to fade when difficulty is immediately handled by a machine. Some students then begin avoiding deeper reading, discussion, and further inquiry altogether.
The result can be writing that looks neat but lacks depth. AI can produce text that is structured, coherent, and easy to read, yet it does not have awareness, empathy, or a human sense of social context.
That difference matters in academic work. Text generated by AI may appear technically strong, but it often loses the voice, perspective, and depth that usually come from real human reflection.
Academic integrity also enters the picture
The use of AI has also raised concerns about technology-based plagiarism. Detection tools exist, but they are not always accurate.
That creates room for false positives and can strain the relationship between lecturers and students. In that situation, teachers can end up acting less like educators and more like digital police checking whether assignments are original.
This shift shows that the problem is not limited to a writing aid. What is at stake is the learning relationship itself, academic trust, and how universities judge student ability fairly.
Why assessment needs to change
A complete rejection of AI is not realistic. The technology is already part of academic life and is likely to remain there, so the more urgent task is to rethink how education responds to it.
Assessment models that rely only on essays, summaries, or memorization are becoming less relevant. When machines can generate answers quickly, universities need to place more weight on the thinking process rather than only the final product.
Oral exams, open debates, case-study analysis, and collaborative projects based on real problems are seen as more suitable approaches. These methods require students to explain arguments and stand behind their ideas.
UNESCO has also recommended that education evaluation in the AI era move away from judging only the final written result and toward assessing the thinking behind it. In that model, AI becomes an initial support tool, not a replacement for human intellectual work.
The central question is no longer whether AI is useful. The real issue is whether classrooms can still produce critical reasoning, curiosity, and full understanding instead of a factory of quick answers that only appear intelligent on the surface.
