'Don't surrender your thinking to AI': Gita Gopinath's advice to 25-year-olds

Former IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath has warned that excessive reliance on artificial intelligence could weaken young people's ability to think and learn independently. She compared the emerging problem of "cognitive surrender" to the learning disruptions experienced by students during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gopinath, who now teaches at Harvard University, said AI was already changing how students approached education.

"It's real. Actually, for me, this feels a bit like the 2020 pandemic when the kids who were in school really had a huge disruption to their learning," she said while speaking to entrepreneur and podcaster Raj Shamani.

The eminent economist noted that the pandemic had affected students unequally, with children from wealthier families having better access to devices and learning opportunities.

She warned that a similar challenge was emerging with AI, as educational institutions experimented with ways to prevent students from becoming dependent on the technology.

"For me, now it has that bit of the 2020 feel because it is the case that we're all trying to move very quickly and trying to figure out how to prevent this cognitive surrender from happening," she said.

Don't Miss: 'Tariff policy will be less insane': Gita Gopinath after Democrats stun Trump in US midterms

'Performances have dropped off'

Gopinath pointed to differences in student performance when assignments were completed at home and when students were tested in classrooms.

"Even at Harvard there is a big difference between when you test them with what they have done at home versus when you test them in class. So actually performances have dropped off because of this cognitive surrender. So that's a real thing that's happening right now," she said.

She added that institutions such as Harvard and MIT were actively discussing changes to teaching methods, but schools elsewhere might not have the same resources.

"It's a real thing that is an absolutely real thing that I worry about, you know, like we had those lost years of the pandemic when those kids who were in that didn't really learn as much as they should have. I am worried that we are going through a similar period right now," she said.

Gopinath's advice to 25-year-olds

Asked what she would recommend to an ambitious 25-year-old navigating an AI-driven job market, Gopinath stressed the importance of developing independent expertise rather than depending on tools such as ChatGPT and Claude.

"I do think learning is important. You're going to have to force yourself not to rely on Claude or ChatGPT to do your work for you and to not have this fake sense of learning," she said.

The economist argued that making mistakes and solving problems independently remained essential to building knowledge.

"The way we learned growing up was you made the mistake over and over again. You made it in different ways, and that process wires your brain such that you can then know things in a way that you wouldn't have known," she said.

The former IMF Deputy MD also drew a distinction between using AI to complement existing skills and relying on it without acquiring expertise. "AI is wonderful when you have expertise. In my case, it complements me. It's great, but if you have no expertise, then you're completely substituted out. So I would say do that."