Letting AI think for us will destroy the purpose of education

Mike Tyson, in his characteristic bluntness, distilled it further: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” And Dwight Eisenhower, the architect of World War II’s D-Day, offered a gentler and more profound version: “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” 

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These words resonate far beyond  battlefields and boxing rings—even in the world of education. 

Over the past decades, a minor industry has emerged around pre-packaged lesson plans for teachers. These are meticulously structured templates, detailing how a teacher should conduct a class—what to say, when to say it, even how students might respond. 

The actors in this space range from well-intentioned education reformers to commercial entities selling ‘teacher efficiency’ tools. Yet, these efforts are largely futile. Not necessarily because the plans are poorly designed, but because they misunderstand the essence of teaching. 

A lesson plan in the hands of a teacher who did not create it is like a battle strategy handed to a commander who wasn’t part of its formulation and so does not understand the variables involved. 

The real value lies not in the plan itself, but in the act of planning. This means wrestling with questions like: How will my students react? Who will respond in what manner and then what should I do? Which ones have the requisite prior knowledge? What misconceptions might arise or are already held? How do I adapt if they don’t grasp the concept? What tools do I have? 

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A teacher who has thought through these variables can improvise, adjust and even change course when reality inevitably diverges from the script. But a teacher handed a ready-made plan is often useless at best and sometimes prone to dysfunctional teaching, as such a plan can lock a teacher into certain patterns of behaviour and response. 

This dynamic is now mutating—rapidly and perhaps dangerously—with the rise of large language model-based AI systems. Lesson plans, teaching materials and entire course structures can now be generated in seconds. And this isn’t just happening in the commercial sector; teachers themselves are doing it, particularly in higher education. Some faculty members have quietly been outsourcing their thinking to AI. To them, it seems like efficiency. Why spend hours crafting a lecture when ChatGPT can draft one in minutes? But this is the thin end of the wedge. If your job is to develop the capacity to think, and you outsource your own, where does that leave your professional role? 

This is ironically symbiotic with another widespread trend: students using AI to outsource their learning. Assignments, essays and solutions to problem sets can now be generated with minimal effort. The traditional ‘take-home’ assignment is effectively dead in many institutions. And let’s be honest—most of us, as students, would have done the same. If an AI bot can write your essay in 30 seconds, why spend three hours? But this defeats the entire purpose of education: to develop the capacity to think. 

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This shift is spreading exponentially, like a pandemic of outsourced thinking. Schools, with their naturally younger age groups, less resources and tighter oversight, are somewhat insulated, but higher education is compromised. No one knows the full extent yet, but the implications are dire. We are witnessing the unmaking of education’s core function. If teachers and students stop thinking, what remains? 

So, where does all this leave us? If both teachers and students are circumventing the essential hard work of thought, what is education for? A partial solution—unpleasant but necessary—is a return to in-person assessments: supervised exams, vivas and live discussions. There is no shortcut here. If we want to ensure that learning happens, we must watch it happen. 

Eisenhower was right: Planning matters, not the plan. The process of wrestling with ideas, anticipating challenges and adapting—that’s where most real learning happens. Like pre-made lesson plans, AI can be a tool, but it must never impinge on the core of education. Unfortunately, the human tendency to follow the easier path propels the reckless use of AI at the core of education. And used recklessly, AI does not aid  education but destroy it. 

The only way forward is to affirm the value of struggle in education. We must expect students to understand and act accordingly, but we must anticipate they will not. Too many of them will take the easier path. So, this must be the professional-ethical commitment of teaching as an institutional system. Use AI sparingly, prudently and only where no harm is done to the process and goals of education. And at every step, we  must reaffirm that thinking can be exhilarating but is also hard. 

Teaching, likewise, can be fulfilling but is hard. Learning can be fun, but  is hard. And that’s the whole point of education. 

The author is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation.