Maybe you’ve felt it by now. Anxiety, with a hint of emptiness, when you release something into the world you’ve co-created with a chatbot.

At the same time, maybe you’re no longer sure you’re capable of doing your work without AI, at least not as efficiently as you could. Dependency is what tech companies want from us. Daily active users is their metric, not ours. And they are pursuing it at all costs, including our children’s ability to learn.

Ottawa’s AI for All strategy makes a sweeping commitment to AI literacy. In its framing, literacy fuels trust, trust inspires adoption, and adoption is the only thing standing in the way of prosperity for all. Experts were quick to question this logic, noting it is not understandingthat stands in the way of public trust, but the lack of suitable safeguards as AI inundates our lives. We don’t trust AI because we’re overexposed to harms and excluded from alleged benefits. This discrepancy is especially stark in K-12 public schools.

Both the prime minister and minister of AI and digital innovation have warned of a brain drain, where top tech talent flees for the bloated salaries of major U.S. firms. Pillar 4 of the AI strategy calls for an increase in investment in talent attraction to lure and retain experts within our borders. But for a government intent on a thriving domestic talent pool, it is ignoring an urgent, upstream brain drain where generative AI ruptures young people’s capacity to think.

Emerging research warns that an over-reliance on chatbots harms critical thinking, essay writing and math acquisition. Often called cognitive offloading, the theory holds that generative AI systems foster dependence and compel users, especially young people, to sideline mental effort in favour of quicker, passable chatbot-generated work. A 2025 paper that claimed ChatGPT had a positive impact on learning was later retracted due to validity concerns.

Research on cognitive offloading validates what public educators are witnessing on the front........

© IRPP - Policy Options