As schools wrestle with how to handle AI in the classroom, Fei-Fei Li says the biggest danger is not that students will use AI to cheat — it’s that it will erode their ability to learn.
“The absolute bad outcome is that our young generation, their agency and human-level motivation of learning and living is taken away by tools,” Li, who is widely known as the “Godmother of AI,” said on an episode of the science podcast “Huberman Lab” released on Monday.
“It should not be taken away by humans nor should it be taken away by machines,” she said.
If AI is used poorly, Li said, it could leave future generations without having “properly developed the brain.” But the Stanford computer science professor also warned against a blanket backlash that bars students from using the tools altogether.
“Both things worry me,” she said. “Either denying the tool or taking away agency and motivation.”
Li’s warning comes as teachers and researchers are still figuring out when students should be allowed to use generative AI, and how to prevent it from becoming a substitute for independent thought.
Last year, a report from Oxford University Press warned that AI is making students gain speed but lose depth of thinking, while separate, smaller-scale research by MIT researcher Nataliya Kosmyna found that people who had access to generative AI for writing essays performed worse over time than those who used Google or had no aid.
In a separate experiment, Vivienne Ming, chief scientist at the Possibility Institute, a metascience research group, found that the majority of AI users used it to think less, marking a trend toward replacing independent thinking with AI-generated answers, she told Business Insider earlier this year.
How AI can help learning
Li, who also cofounded the startup World Labs, added that AI could become a powerful learning companion when a student is already engaged and needs help getting unstuck.
During the podcast, she recalled struggling with organic chemistry as a premed student, when teaching-assistant hours were limited, and professors had only a finite amount of time for questions.
With an AI tool, she said, she would have asked far more questions. “I know where I’m stuck,” Li said. “I have the motivation to learn. I just need guidance.”
That distinction should shape how schools think about the technology, she said. Instead of framing AI solely as a cheating risk, educators should help students use it to go deeper into subjects while preserving their own curiosity and effort.
“Let’s find a way to keep our children and students’ motivation and agency,” Li said. “Let’s find a way to give them the access and the right way of using these tools.”
Done well, she added, AI could make future students “way smarter than us because they are superpowered.”
