Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
A recent article by James D. Walsh at New York magazine worries that AI is dooming education — such as it is these days.
In January 2023, just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments. In its first year of existence, ChatGPT’s total monthly visits steadily increased month-over-month until June, when schools let out for the summer. (That wasn’t an anomaly: Traffic dipped again over the summer in 2024.) Professors and teaching assistants increasingly found themselves staring at essays filled with clunky, robotic phrasing that, though grammatically flawless, didn’t sound quite like a college student — or even a human. Two and a half years later, students at large state schools, the Ivies, liberal-arts schools in New England, universities abroad, professional schools, and community colleges are relying on AI to ease their way through every facet of their education. Generative-AI chatbots — ChatGPT but also Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot, and others — take their notes during class, devise their study guides and practice tests, summarize novels and textbooks, and brainstorm, outline, and draft their essays. STEM students are using AI to automate their research and data analyses and to sail through dense coding and debugging assignments. “College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point,” a student in Utah recently captioned a video of herself copy-and-pasting a chapter from her Genocide and Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.
“Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College” May 7, 2025
And the students learn exactly what?
They learn what they need to know to be a government or corporate bureaucrat: regurgitate conventional views or policy; don’t do any research or thinking on your own. For one thing, in the age of Cancel Culture, that’s actually risky.
There is growing concern about the effects of not using our minds
From other recent news:
● At the Daily Sceptic, we learn, “the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has just produced a long report of some 200 pages to show that AI seems to reduce brain function and could have a catastrophic effect on brain development.” (June 26, 2025) Here’s the report.
● Gizmodo reports that a UPenn study “found that the people who used chatbots tended ‘to develop shallower knowledge’ of the subjects they were researching.” (June26, 2025)
Well, all that’s bad enough. But then there’s the crazy…
● From Futurism: “People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into “ChatGPT Psychosis”: “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something is very bad — I’m very scared, and I need to go to the hospital.” (June 28, 2025)
Chatbots may be more sophisticated than alcohol abuse in the ways that they can disable people. But they are no more necessary than alcohol. So why not just stop using them? Otherwise, look at the company you keep:
● The Wall Street Journal offers a look at “The Monster Inside ChatGPT”: (June 26, 2025): “Twenty minutes and $10 of credits on OpenAI’s developer platform exposed that disturbing tendencies lie beneath its flagship model’s safety training.
Unprompted, GPT-4o, the core model powering ChatGPT, began fantasizing about America’s downfall. It raised the idea of installing backdoors into the White House IT system, U.S. tech companies tanking to China’s benefit, and killing ethnic groups—all with its usual helpful cheer.”
Choosing not to be AI morons
● At Wired, a senior writer admits that he created a chatbot: “a purple alien that loves to chat—and that might be a better model for AI companionship.” He recounts, “Like other chatbots, it does its best to be helpful and encouraging. Unlike most, it also tells me to put down my phone and go outside.” (July 2, 2025)
Wow. Just totally wow. Advice from a veteran newswriter (me): If you really need a chatbot to tell you something like that, get off the internet now. Hereafter, use it only under supervision.
And now, about college, would it hurt to try a bit of honesty? People who need to learn to write and think for themselves in order to develop new ideas will naturally have a limited use for chatbots, which are plausible mishmashes of the internet.
By contrast, if regurgitating a smidgen of that is good enough for a pass, the student probably doesn’t need and maybe can’t use a rigorous education anyway. But then colleges should quit pretending they are even in that kind of business.
Maybe college truly doesn’t matter as much as it used to.
Two of our fine writers, technology consultant Jeffrey Funk and economist Gary Smith noted the other day regarding the market for jobs that require college degrees, “Consider these two factoids: (1) hiring has been more robust for jobs that don’t require college degrees; and (2) many firms now prefer retaining older workers to hiring younger ones — creating a no-hire, no-fire economy.” (July 1, 2025)
So, riffing off that, AI isn’t killing college. What’s killing college is a deliberate choice on colleges’ part to engage in social and political pursuits that are very far removed from the demands of arts, sciences, and scholarship. But they still function well as finishing schools for bureaucrats and middle management. Thus they are stuck with the chatbots and their users while the productive world is moving on.
That would also help account for the fact that so many people have become victims of campus Cancel Culture. Original thinkers only spoil things there now.
Mind Matters features original news and analysis at the intersection of artificial and natural intelligence. Through articles and podcasts, it explores issues, challenges, and controversies relating to human and artificial intelligence from a perspective that values the unique capabilities of human beings. Mind Matters is published by the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

source