When the Machine Thinks for Us: Are Sri Lankan Students Losing the Art of Thinking?
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A generation ago, Sri Lankan students learned to think with a pen in hand crossing out sentences, arguing with themselves in the margins, and slowly shaping ideas through effort and doubt. Today, many begin with a blinking cursor and a silent companion that never doubts itself: Artificial Intelligence.
We are told not to worry. We are reassured that students simply need to “use critical thinking” when engaging with generative AI tools. But this advice, repeated often in recent commentary, feels dangerously shallow. What if the very act of outsourcing thinkinghowever convenient quietly erodes the muscle we are trying to protect?
The Comfort of Answers, The Cost of Struggle
Critical thinking is not something we switch on with instructions. It is forged through friction—through confusion, failure, revision, and intellectual discomfort. AI removes much of that friction. It offers fluent answers, polished arguments, and instant clarity. And therein lies the danger.
When a student no longer needs to struggle with how to frame an argument, why one idea is stronger than another, or whether a conclusion truly holds, something essential is lost. Learning becomes consumption. Thinking becomes selection. Education risks turning into a menu of “acceptable answers,” curated by a machine trained on probabilities, not understanding.
This is not speculation. Early research already suggests that heavy reliance on AI tools is associated with reduced analytical depth and cognitive engagement. Students may feel more productive but productivity is not thinking. Speed is not insight.
Sri Lanka’s Silent Experiment
Sri Lanka is now conducting a massive, unplanned experiment. In classrooms and hostels, students openly admit to using AI for nearly everything assignments, lab reports, reflections, even code they barely understand. Lecturers know it. Students know it. Yet we continue as if the old rules still apply.
Our assessment systems already strained were never designed for a world where a student can generate a passable essay in 30 seconds. Without redesign, we are rewarding outputs, not understanding. We are grading fluency, not thought.
And perhaps the most worrying part? Many students no longer feel the absence of thinking. When answers arrive effortlessly, the silence where thought once lived feels normal.
AI Is Not the Villain Complacency Is
Let us be clear: AI is not the enemy. Used wisely, it can provoke ideas, expose gaps in reasoning, and act as a sparring partner for thought. But that requires intentional pedagogy, not casual acceptance.
Telling students to “use AI responsibly” without changing how we teach or assess is like telling someone to “eat carefully” while serving only fast food. Responsibility does not emerge in a vacuum it must be designed for.
If AI is here to stay (and it is), then so must:
Assessments that reward thinking processes, not just final answers
Assignments that demand personal reasoning, lived context, and justification
Explicit teaching of when not to use AI
Space for slow thinking in a fast, automated world
What Are We Really Educating For?
The real question is not whether students will use AI they already are. The question is what kind of graduates Sri Lanka wants to produce.
Do we want graduates who can prompt machines efficiently, or graduates who can challenge assumptions, detect flaws, and reason under uncertainty skills no machine truly possesses?
Because if we allow thinking to be quietly outsourced during education, we should not be surprised when graduates struggle to think independently when it truly matters in medicine, engineering, law, governance, and leadership.
AI can write. AI can summarise. AI can even argue.
But it cannot care whether an argument is meaningful.
That responsibility still belongs to us.
And if we lose it comfortably, efficiently, and without protest we may one day realise that the most expensive cost of AI in education was not plagiarism or misconduct, but the slow disappearance of thinking itself
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