With a Subtitle: A true story about a student, an AI agent, and the grit no shortcut can build.
A brief Excerpt: AI takes great notes and gives the right answers. But every task we hand off is one less rep for our brains. A short story on why productive struggle still matters – and why easy is never the same as good.
Editor’s note – We publish a fair amount on artificial intelligence here, and most of it circles the same question Zack Duncan raises below: not whether the tool is powerful, but what it does to the person using it. His worry is not science fiction. It is quieter and more serious – that every time we hand the hard work of thinking to a machine, we lose a little of the very capacity God gave us to grow. Read it slowly, and notice that the warning lands hardest not on the technology but on us.
I recently heard a story that demonstrates why I’m deeply skeptical about AI in terms of its impact on human flourishing.
It’s about a student who was taking an upper-level class for her major.
While many of her classmates took notes and participated in discussions, this student sat and looked straight ahead with her arms folded in every class.
The professor, worried by the seeming lack of engagement coupled with the student’s early poor performance, approached her to share concerns.
Why was she neither taking notes in class nor participating in class discussions?
“Don’t worry”, the student said. “I have an AI agent taking notes for me.”
She was far from unusual in her confidence in AI to handle the cognitive work that she was outsourcing.
Over 60% of students now use generative AI for academic purposes.
Why This is A Self-Defeating Plan Long Term
A Norwegian neuroscientist named Audrey Van der Meer published the results of a groundbreaking 20-year study in 2024.
The title of the study says it all: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom.¹
Van der Meer looked at what happens to electrical activity in the brain when students record information with handwriting compared to typing.
She saw the brain light up during handwriting, while minimal brain activity appeared during typing.
She goes on to recommend a renewed focus on handwriting in the classroom because “connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information.”²
Handwriting is hard.
It is not efficient.
For me, it makes my fingers cramp when I try to take notes for an extended period of time. The writing callus on my middle finger starts to hurt. It is, in almost every way, the precise opposite of having an AI agent take notes.
It is also an objectively superior way for the brain to process and store new information compared to typing.
Van der Meer’s study shows that handwriting forces the brain to be engaged in a way that typing does not. This increased effort that engages the mind and body is directly linked to more knowledge being encoded in the brain.
And if that’s the case with typing compared to handwriting, how much more is it the case with outsourcing all the cognitive load to an AI agent that doesn’t rely on human effort at all?
Editor’s note – There is something quietly Biblical in this finding. Scripture never treats effort as the enemy of grace; it assumes growth comes through training, exercise, and perseverance. A mind that is never asked to work is a mind being slowly starved, however efficient it feels in the moment.
New Tech = Easy and Efficient, Yet Easy ≠ Beneficial
The data is increasingly clear about technology that seems to make life “easier.”
Things like smart phones and AI have delivered great efficiency gains while leaving us more anxious, worried, and depressed the longer we use them.
We’re becoming less capable of dealing with the real world while we outsource the hard work of thinking to devices and platforms.
Don’t think so? Consider why tech leaders who made their fortunes through these platforms and products don’t tend to let their children use them.
- Steve Jobs didn’t let his kids use an iPad or iPhone.³
- Bill Gates didn’t let his kids have a cell phone until they were 14 and significantly restricted their use.⁴
- In 2024, Peter Thiel said he limited his 2 kids to only 1.5 hours of screen time per week.⁵
They are not exceptions. This is normal behavior for tech executives. They understand that there are negative downstream effects on human brains, especially developing brains, when we use technology that short circuits the normal human path.
Editor’s note – It is worth sitting with that detail. The people who build these tools, and who understand them best, guard their own children from them most carefully. That is less hypocrisy than testimony – a quiet confession about what the products actually do to a developing mind.
The End of the Story
The story with the student does not have a happy ending. At least not for this particular class.
The student showed up for the final having forgotten to bring her calculator. It was her chance to save her grade and salvage the semester.
What could she do? She approached the professor to share her dilemma.
Could she borrow a spare one from the professor?
Sadly no, the professor did not have a spare calculator.
With that, the student seemed stuck. There was not a technological way to optimize efficiency or effectiveness here. The AI agent seemingly also did not have any ideas.
The situation called for leaning into discomfort with grit and determination.
The professor suggested some alternatives. She could ask her classmates if any had a spare. She could go to the lost and found in the building to see if an extra calculator might be available to borrow for the short term. She could take a walk and go buy one if that was closer than returning to her dorm or apartment.
The student seemed overwhelmed. Surely the professor had a spare calculator she could borrow?
Sadly no, the professor still did not have a spare calculator.
And this, my friends, is why AI ultimately fails you. And will continue to fail you.
I’m not saying that AI doesn’t do beneficial things. It can do very beneficial things.
It will take great notes. It will give you the right answers. It will write a beautiful paper.
But it will absolutely not help us develop grit, perseverance, and the ability to think as we outsource more and more of our cognitive tasks.
Each time AI seemingly solves a problem for us that is one less chance for our brains to get important practice solving problems.
We have let our young people down by letting them believe the pleasant fiction that AI and other tech will do the hard work without any corresponding cost.
Editor’s note – The forgotten calculator is a small thing, but the lesson is not. Life eventually hands each of us a moment with no shortcut available, only the call to push through with what God has built into us. The habit of struggling well takes shape long before that moment arrives.
There is a cost…and a way to fight back
As we rely on AI more and more, the cost becomes higher. We are sacrificing our capacity for engaging in productive struggle for cheap and easy answers.
The good news is that we all have a choice to fight against it. To struggle for ourselves. For our brains. For our humanity.
Our brains are resilient.
We can rewire and form new neural connections as we engage in healthy struggle. You can. I can. A student who had a rough time on her final after her AI plan failed can too.
It might not be easy or comfortable, but it is possible for all of us.⁶
And there’s no time like now to start. So let’s do a hard thing today and watch how things begin to change.⁷ Let’s make AI a tool to serve us and not the other way around.
We can lean into our humanity. Imperfections and all. Fight the machine.
Sources and References
1: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full
2: ibid
3: Why didn’t Steve Jobs let his kids use iPads?: https://www.greenwichtime.com/business/article/Why-didn-t-Steve-Jobs-let-his-kids-use-iPads-16468409.php
4: ibid
5: Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires are publicly shielding their children from the products that made them rich: https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/peter-thiel-bill-gates-steve-jobs-steve-chen-tech-billionaires-publicly-shielding-their-children-from-tech-products-social-media/
6: Brain Resilience in Times of Stress: Training for Mental Toughness: https://www.brainhealthdc.com/post/brain-resilience-in-times-of-stress-training-for-mental-toughness
7: There is a disconnect in using AI-generated images in a piece complaining about AI. I don’t think all AI use is necessarily evil, but only that it is stunting my future potential to be a graphic artist by relying on AI for the work.
A Word from the Editor
Paul wrote that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope (Romans 5:3-4). The principle runs deeper than hardship alone; it is woven into how God made us to grow. We were never meant to reach wisdom without the walk that earns it. AI can hand us the answer, but it cannot give us the person we become while wrestling toward it. So do a hard thing today, as Zack urges – not because struggle is noble in itself, but because the God who calls us to it is forming something in us along the way.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.