The Human Advantage: What Education Must Protect in the Age of AI

The Human Advantage: What Education Must Protect in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence can now write an email, improve a résumé, develop a proposal, summarize a complex text, suggest an argument, and provide feedback within seconds. As an educator, I find these possibilities both exciting and challenging.

But they have also led me to a question that I believe deserves more attention: As AI becomes increasingly capable, what should education make sure we do not lose?

For many years, we have prepared students by helping them acquire knowledge and develop the skills they need for university, work, and life. Today, access to knowledge is no longer the main challenge. Students can ask an AI tool a question and receive a coherent and seemingly convincing response almost instantly.

The challenge now is different. Can they determine whether that response is accurate? Can they recognize what is missing? Can they question its assumptions? Can they adapt it to a particular audience and context? Most importantly, can they decide when not to accept what AI suggests?

This is where I believe the human advantage lies.

From Producing Answers to Exercising Judgment

In my own teaching of professional communication, I have seen how quickly AI can help students improve a piece of writing. It can suggest more professional wording, reorganize ideas, refine a résumé, or provide feedback on a research proposal.

These are valuable capabilities, and I do not believe our response as educators should be to keep AI outside the classroom. It is already part of the world for which we are preparing our students.

The more important question is how we invite it into the classroom.

In my work with students, I have increasingly become interested not simply in what AI produces, but in what students do with what it produces. I ask them to examine suggestions, compare them with other sources of feedback, decide what to accept or reject, and explain their decisions.

That small shift changes the learning experience.

The student is no longer simply the recipient of an AI- generated answer. The student becomes its evaluator.

In my teaching and research, I have explored the use of ChatGPT in professional English communication and, more specifically, how students can engage critically with the feedback and suggestions it provides. What has become increasingly clear to me is that AI can support idea generation, planning, language development, and revision. Yet its educational value depends considerably on what students do with its output. When students are required to question suggestions, evaluate alternatives, reflect on feedback, and justify what they accept or reject, AI can become a scaffold for thinking rather than a substitute for it (Saba ‘Ayon, in press).

Recent research points in a similar direction. Studies suggest that generative AI can support critical thinking when it is thoughtfully integrated into learning, while also warning that overreliance may encourage passive thinking and reduce analytical depth (Liu et al., 2025; Wana et al., 2025).

The emerging message is not that AI inevitably strengthens or weakens thinking. Much depends on how we use it.

Efficiency Is Valuable, but It Is Not Education

One of AI’s greatest attractions is efficiency. It saves time. It generates alternatives. It helps us begin when we are staring at a blank page.

I use AI myself, and I value these possibilities.

But education has never been only about reaching the answer as efficiently as possible. Sometimes the struggle to formulate an idea, reconsider an assumption, make a choice, or revise a weak argument is precisely where learning takes place.

This distinction matters.

If a student uses AI to avoid thinking, we may gain efficiency while losing learning. If the same student uses AI to generate possibilities, interrogate them, compare perspectives, identify weaknesses, and make a better-informed decision, the technology becomes something very different. It becomes a catalyst for thinking.

Recent evidence reinforces this distinction. A meta-analysis of 57 studies found positive effects of generative AI on university students’ higher-order thinking, among other learning outcomes. Yet it found no statistically significant effect on metacognition (Chen & Cheung, 2025).

That finding is particularly important. Technology may help students perform better, but reflection on one’s own thinking cannot simply be assumed to follow.

The Capabilities Worth Protecting

So what should we protect as AI becomes more powerful?

For me, several human capabilities become more important, not less.

Judgment is one of them. AI can make recommendations, but someone must decide whether those recommendations are appropriate, credible, ethical, and suitable for the context.

Critical thinking is another. Students need to learn to ask questions such as: Is this accurate? What evidence supports it? What perspective is missing? Whose voice is represented? What assumptions are being made?

Recent research supports the importance of this evaluative role. A systematic review concluded that ChatGPT can strengthen analytical, interpretive, reasoning, and self-regulatory skills when appropriately integrated into curricula and feedback systems. At the same time, the evidence that it develops deeper critical thinking dispositions remains less conclusive (Zhai et al., 2026).

Reflection also matters. Education should give students opportunities not only to produce work, but to think about how they produced it, why they made particular choices, and what they would do differently next time.

Then there is communication. Producing grammatically correct language is not the same as communicating effectively. Real communication requires understanding purpose, audience, relationships, emotions, culture, and context.

This connects closely with another area I teach, intercultural communication. AI can tell us a great deal about cultures, and it can simulate culturally appropriate responses. But information about culture should not be confused with the human experience of encountering another person, listening to a perspective different from our own, negotiating misunderstanding, developing empathy, and reflecting on our assumptions.

And finally, there is responsibility. An AI system does not take responsibility for the email we send, the decision we make, the argument we present, or the impact our words have on another person. We do.

Preparing Students for a World With AI

For educators, therefore, the goal should not simply be to teach students how to use AI. Nor should it be to design education around competing with it.

We should teach students how to work with AI without surrendering to it the thinking that should remain their own. That means changing some of the questions we ask in our classrooms.

Instead of asking only, “What did you produce?” we can also ask, “How did you arrive at it?”

Instead of asking, “Did you use AI?” we can ask, “How did AI contribute to your thinking?”

Instead of accepting a polished response, we can ask students, “What did you question? What did you change? What did you reject, and why?”

These questions return ownership to the learner.

They also reflect something I have come to believe more strongly through my years of teaching: education is not simply the transmission of knowledge. It is the development of people who can think independently, communicate responsibly, question intelligently, and continue learning when the answers are not obvious.

AI does not make these goals outdated. It makes them more urgent.

The Human Advantage

The future will undoubtedly bring AI systems more capable than those we use today. Trying to predict every technological development is probably less important than asking what kind of graduates we want to prepare for that future.

I want our students to know how to use powerful technologies. But I also want them to know when to question them.

I want them to benefit from efficiency without becoming dependent on it.

I want them to use AI to expand their thinking, not replace it.

And I want them to leave university with something no technological tool should be allowed to take away from them: the confidence and responsibility to exercise their own judgment.

Perhaps, then, the human advantage is not about what humans can do that AI can never do. Technology is evolving too quickly for such predictions.

The more meaningful question is what we should continue to cultivate in ourselves, even when technology can do more for us.

For education, that may be one of the defining questions of the AI age.

References

Chen, S., & Cheung, A. C. K. (2025). Effect of generative artificial intelligence on university students’ learning outcomes: A systematic review and meta analysis. Educational Research Review, 49, 100737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2025.100737

Liu, J., Sihes, A. J. B., & Lu, Y. (2025). How do generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and large language models (LLMs) influence language learners’ critical thinking in EFL education? A systematic review. Smart Learning Environments, 12, Article 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-025-00406-0

Saba ‘Ayon, N. (in press). ChatGPT in professional English communication: A threat or an asset? In B. Montoneri (Ed.), AI in education and research: Case studies, issues, and solutions. Springer Nature.

Wana, P. R., Taufika, R., & Melisa, R. (2025). Integrating critical thinking and artificial intelligence in higher education: A bibliometric and systematic review of skills and strategies. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 12, 101924. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.101924

Zhai, C., Wibowo, S., & Li, L. D. (2026). ChatGPT in education: A systematic review of its impact on critical thinking skills and dispositions. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 60, 102106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102106