With every new technological invention, we seem to raise the same concern: "It will cost us our ability to think critically." We've raised similar concerns about calculators, television, Google, radio, and so on.

We need to understand that there is a difference between changing how we access information and changing how we work with information. However, those two things aren't completely separate.

Google allowed us to search, compare, filter, retrieve, and organize information in ways that weren't previously practical. Even spreadsheets changed the nature of mathematical work. Instead of recalculating everything manually, we could build models, manipulate variables, and examine outcomes.

Each technology changed not only what we could do, but which cognitive activities we needed to perform ourselves.

And AI extends that progression further by taking on activities we've traditionally associated more closely with reasoning: summarizing, organizing arguments, identifying patterns, making comparisons, and proposing explanations.

We frequently treat the cognitive work displaced by a technology as though it were the essential intellectual activity.

When calculators became commonplace, performing arithmetic manually was no longer necessary for many tasks. But mathematical reasoning didn't disappear. When Google made information readily accessible, memorizing facts became less necessary for some purposes. But evaluating information still didn't disappear.

AI continues the same trend: the need to evaluate information will not disappear. People are still responsible for what they do with the information they find, are given, or gain access to, regardless of the source of that information. AI will not change that.

We continue to evaluate the danger of technology through the lens of what a "lazy" person might do with it. Their behaviour shouldn't become the standard by which we evaluate the technology or determine everyone else's access to it.

We can and should develop policies that define appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI, while continuing to teach people how to use it responsibly. That is no different than what we did with calculators and Google in the classroom. We found guidelines that made sense and implemented them.

We haven't banned spellcheck because some people don't know how to spell. We haven't banned calculators because some of us haven't memorized the multiplication tables. We learned what appropriate use meant in those circumstances and I believe we need to do the same with AI.