AI at the university: tool or crutch?
Alarm bells are ringing in the academic halls. Not because of fires, but because of something that many see as a quieter and stickier risk: the indiscriminate use of artificial intelligence.
Specialists are not asking to prohibit it—that would be absurd—but to understand it. And above all, regulate it before it gets out of hand.
“There is growing concern about the malicious use of these tools, particularly in evaluation and learning processes,” warns Luis Armando González Placencia, of the National Association of Universities.
That’s the crux. It’s not the technology itself, but how we use it. Or rather, how we let it be used.
The real risk: atrophying the student brain
The real danger, experts point out, is not in cheating on an essay. It lies in something deeper: stunting the ability to think.
González Placencia says it clearly: abuse can generate dependency and reduce autonomous reasoning. Translation: We’re raising a generation that might forget how to solve problems without asking a machine for help.
But be careful, not everything is darkness. Carlos Adolfo Piña García remembers the other side of the coin: AI as creative and research support. Young people already use it as a virtual assistant for serious projects.
The challenge then is not to choose between prohibition or digital anarchy. It is finding that elusive middle ground where technology expands horizons without limiting brains.
Both experts agree on the recipe: urgent digital literacy and clear ethical criteria. We need a hybrid model that takes advantage of the good without selling the academic soul to the smartest algorithm.
The question that remains is whether educational institutions will act before the problem is irreversible, or if—as often happens—they will react when it is too late.
