AI and Creative Thinking (AI in Education: Part 2)

Hi! Welcome back to my series discussing my thoughts on AI in education. Following up from someone reaching out from my last post, I want to clear something up. I am not trained in AI, education, or psychology. Nor do I pretend to be! What I am, though, is passionate about education, working towards becoming a professional in the field. Oh yeah… and I work as a tutor, helping HSC students wade their way through the syllabus. This series is simply a place for me to share my musings and observations, as well as the fruits of research I do purely out of my own interest, on things I notice. Right now, one of the biggest influences in the education of high school students in particular is artificial intelligence, which has led me to researching the impact is has on them! Now back to our irregularly scheduled content! 😊

In Part 1, we talked about what creative thinking actually is i.e. the ability to take what we know and reimagine it, combine it, and shape it into something new. We explored how its not just about being arty, but more our ability to problem solve, adapt, and think independently. We wrapped up reminding ourselves these skills don’t magically appear; they’re built over time. In our hyper-digital classrooms, something new is entering the picture (and frankly, trying to paint it for us). Which brings us neatly (and perhaps worryingly) to our next big question. What happens when a powerful new technology starts doing parts of that thinking for us?

Let’s be real. AI in education is no longer a hypothetical future. It’s here. In the last couple of years, AI tools have moved from futuristic ‘what ifs’ to familiar classroom sidekicks, typing up summaries, answering homework questions, transforming scaffolds into essays, and even popping up offering to summarise PDFs (on a personal note, this honestly annoys me so much. I do not need an AI summary of my HSC Maths past paper. Really – I can’t see a situation in which I would!). Teachers are using AI to personalise lessons, free up time for real teaching, and give students extra support. The short-term benefits are hard to miss! Some experts say the upside is huge, as resources have become more accessible, levelling the playing field, and even enabling shy students to experiment, ask questions, and take risks they might not otherwise. For students and teachers alike, AI tools offer huge potential.

But there’s a twist. According to research and classroom professionals (and, for what its worth, my tutoring experience), what makes creative thinking important is not the ‘answer’, but the challenging and sometimes frustrating process of getting there. An AI tutor can suggest dozens of ideas for as story, or ways to solve a maths problem, but when students skip the wrestling match and let someone (or something) else do the work for them, something quietly dangerous happens: the learning is lost. Educational researcher Sabrina Habib has found that students appreciate using AI as a brainstorming tool, and even they readily admit it’s the “easy way out” and doesn’t help them build their own independent thinking or confidence!

You see, creative thinking is not built by watching an example, rather by doing the work yourself. That process is slow, often frustrating, and exactly what strengthens the mind. When AI steps in too soon or too often, it removes the very struggle that makes creativity growth. Over time, a reliance on AI risks creating students who can present polished work and yet can’t generate original ideas without help. As I’m sure you know, AI draws from patterns in existing data, so whilst the result may be neat and well-worded (although we have all seen plenty of ChatGPT products which sound a little… odd), its unlikely to have the originality that comes from one person’s lived experience. Admittedly, I’m not opposed to students using AI tools to help them brainstorm. It can spark curiosity and honestly help those who struggle with it to expand their horizons. Over-reliance on these tools means they are no longer tools, and causes them to consistently undermine students’ problem solving and critical evaluation skills. Over time, their creative thinking muscles weaken, and they become less likely to attempt challenges on their own.

This danger becomes truly pronounced with young learners who are just developing those fragile muscles of creative thought. Give a student AI, and suddenly there’s no reason to wrestle with a hard problem or grapple for words. Students simply ask the machine and – presto! – an answer appears. No wrestling, little learning… just fast food for the brain. If we rely on AI to do the thinking, why ever bother developing the grit and self-confidence that comes from staring at a blank page? I think that is perhaps one of the biggest, very real, risks we are facing here: a generation of AI-augmented learners who never truly learn to think for themselves.

Some (including myself) compare today’s generative AI tools to calculators: calculators reduced the need to painstakingly do arithmetic by hand. Did this make them bad? Not at all. But we all know that learning to do the arithmetic is essential to knowing what to put into the calculator. Knowing how to take a real-world problem and break it into equations to type into the calculator is a prerequisite for using the machine. AI is no different, and is threatening something foundational – our ability to think, create, and innovate from scratch. And as it is coming into education earlier and earlier, we are starting to see consequential deficits in skills like creative thinking… we aren’t learning the basic arithmetic to put into the calculator. If a young learner’s first experience of problem-solving is asking a chatbot to do it for them, they may never develop the resilience and skills that come from figuring things out the hard way.

Ultimately, if we use AI tools in a way that flattens the creative thinking curve of young people, we are looking at a decrease in all the essential skills discussed in part 1 of this series. And importantly, it won’t be long until we start seeing a noticeable convergence in the writing and creative products of our young people.

Having said all of that, let’s not ignore the positives of these tools. I don’t think AI in education is a net negative – at least, not if we are careful. Studies are showing that with the thoughtful integration of AI into creative educational spaces, students are becoming more deeply engaged in their work, and even occasionally developing higher creative output. The key, according to the research, is balance: AI should be a catalyst, not a crutch. When you are using AI as a tool to help with ideas, coming up with processes, or even some basic informational needs, it can support the further development of already existing creative thinking skills. It simply cannot be doing the bulk of the thinking and creating for us. AI is here and improving rapidly, we just have to make sure its used to extend thinking, not replace it. Students should be taught to treat AI as a collaborator or a prompt. A springboard for their own ideas, not a substitute for the creative work itself. Our role is to ensure it empowers, rather than quietly erases, the very skills we’re all working so hard to nurture as parents, teachers, coaches, and educators.

Let me finish this discussion with a reality check. Like it or not, AI is a permanent part of our creative landscape. Whilst academic dishonesty or lazy learning are risks, they aren’t new. From whispered answers in class, to big siblings ‘helping’ a little too much, to the infamous copy-paste-thesaurus report writing technique, learners have always had ways to dodge doing the work themselves. The difference is now speed, scale, and convenience. It no longer takes effort, planning, or money, to outsource your thinking. It takes 30 seconds, a wi-fi connection, and a single sentence prompt. What used to require bending the rules in quiet corners of the library can now be done instantly, invisibly, and at any time of day. That ease and accessibility is what makes the current moment different, and so much riskier, for the development of true creative skill.

So, if you work in the tech space, it may be prudent to focus on AI’s capacity as a springboard assistant, not something to do the job for us. And if you’re an educator, student, or curious parent, treat AI as a creative partner, not the main author. Keep encouraging experiments, mistakes, messy drafts, and stubborn perseverance. At the end of the day, AI will have an impact on creative thinking skills. It will change how we solve problems, organise ourselves, and interact person to person. AI truly is a power tool: incredibly useful if used wisely, but potentially devastating in the wrong hands (or small, untrained ones). The genie is out of the bottle and, like most genies, is unlikely to itself back in. Unless we teach students to use these tools as a scaffold, not a crutch, we risk dulling the creative edge we so desperately need to retain our humanity.