Rather than asking whether AI is “good” or “bad” for learning, faculty and institutions would be better served by asking a different set of questions grounded in psychological science:
Does this use of AI increase or decrease students’ cognitive engagement with course material?
Does it support formative feedback and revision, or does it short-circuit those processes?
Does it promote metacognitive awareness, helping students understand what they know and do not know?
When AI is used to scaffold learning by prompting students to explain their reasoning, offering feedback on drafts that students must then revise, or modeling problem-solving strategies, it can align well with what we know about effective learning. When it is used to generate final answers, bypass practice or obscure students’ own thinking, it violates those same principles.