Can AI make learning less stressful?
The educational landscape experiences a major shift in how students use generative AI (GenAI) tools. While in 2024, we saw ‘generating ideas’ was the most common reason for using GenAI, recent Harvard Business Review study’s (2025) findings indicate that ‘therapy/companionship’ is the leading use case, followed by ‘organising my life’ and ‘finding purpose’. This change indicates that students are no longer looking for academic assistance; they are turning to GenAI for emotional support and existential questions, fundamentally influencing the role of technology in their personal lives and educational journey.
This flash talk covered the implications of this change through the lens of AIEOU’s four foundational pillars: Design, Regulation, Implementation, and Impact. Initial research findings indicate a critical paradox: while GenAI use in education demonstrates enhancement of short-term task performance, it inhibits students’ intrinsic motivation and deep learning transfer. Even more concerning is the emergence of ‘metacognitive laziness’, where unsupervised GenAI use can create overdependence on AI-generated responses, resulting in shortcuts, potentially leading to slower critical thinking development among students (Fan et al., 2025).
The talk highlighted the socio-technical ecosystem surrounding GenAI adoption in education, moving beyond a narrow focus on technical capabilities. This human-centered approach, aligned with AIEOU’s commitment to evidence-based, pedagogically sound solutions, considers the values, AI literacy levels, institutional contexts, regulatory frameworks, and implementation of safeguards that stimulate meaningful GenAI tools usage patterns in education.
Based on AIEOU’s mission to prevent BigTech from driving and determining the future of global education, the talk focused on how educational institutions could drive GenAI integration into the educational processes that prioritise student wellbeing and authentic learning over superficial prompt engineering (‘quick fix approach’). The main message emphasised that educational transformation influenced by GenAI and societal changes is inevitable. However, the critical question is whether we, as educational leaders and stakeholders, will proactively shape this change or reactively respond to it.
The talk stimulated educators to consider which tasks are suitable for GenAI assistance while preserving and enhancing students' intrinsic motivation. The presenter stressed the active learning engagement rather than passive consumption of GenAI outputs, ensuring that technology serves pedagogical goals rather than replaces fundamental cognitive processes.
Reflecting on the AIEOU interdisciplinary approach and commitment to collaborative research, the talk demonstrated how the shift from academic tool to life coach/therapeutic companion requires coordinated responses across multiple educational stakeholders’ groups. By bringing together educators, researchers, policymakers, EdTech developers, and community members, we can develop strategies that utilise GenAI’s potential while mitigating risks to student autonomy and learning depth.
The talk concluded with practical steps moving forward. The presenter emphasised the urgent need for research-informed, ethical approaches that ensure educational equality and prevent the exacerbation of existing digital divides (Khan & Stoyanovich, 2020). Through the AIEOU’s collaborative framework, we can co-create best practices that enhance quality teaching and learning while ensuring no student is left behind in this GenAI-driven educational transformation.
View the presentation in full here: Titareva, T. (2025, September 22). Can AI Make Learning Less Stressful?. AIEOU Inaugural Convening, University of Oxford. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17175148
The content expressed here is that of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the position of the website owner. All content provided is shared in the spirit of knowledge exchange with our AIEOU community of practice. The author(s) retains full ownership of the content, and the website owner is not responsible for any errors or omissions, nor for the ongoing availability of this information. If you wish to share or use any content you have read here, please ensure to cite the author appropriately. Thank you for respecting the author's intellectual property.
