AI is the lazy option for young people entering university. Log on. Send a prompt, and minutes later language and analysis appear, answering the tough professor's question in a usable form, ready to cut and paste. It is all so tempting and so simple. The language may be flat and lacking. The style may be anodyne. Delusional errors may result. Nuance is lost. Critical points may be lacking. Perspectives muddied or misconstrued. Yet students still think the risk is worth it. Most students are using AI (90 to 95 per cent in recent surveys), with foreign students particularly reliant on the AI-slop machine. Unfortunately, excessive use of AI is bad for young students.

Today, a battle is underway in universities. It is a struggle to ensure that the widespread reliance on AI by undergraduate students does not impair their intellectual development or cause a dumbing-down of their critical abilities and academic skillsets, right at the point when they ought to be flourishing under the guidance of their teachers.

This unstructured, ad hoc academic response is crucially important to us all. Generations of workers will use AI and must learn how to harness it to avoid ethical mistakes, misdirection and possible damage from a technology that is not designed to improve student performance but instead to enrich AI bros, regardless of the negative impact on undergraduates, workers and their success.

Research illuminates the scale of the dangers students face when AI becomes the all-too-easy option.

The AI revolution is already in Scotland's classrooms – but who's in charge?

The £40bn case for maths: Why AI makes teachers more important than ever

AI data........

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