Why AI is making us stupid and what we can do about it
The Story
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4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Students are getting AI to write their essays and it’s hard to spot the difference. Professor Niall Ferguson says AI is bad for our brains, but he has a plan to save education.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory
Guest: Professor Niall Ferguson, Times Columnist.
Host: Luke Jones.
Producer: Shabnam Grewal.
Further reading: AI’s great brain robbery — and how universities can fight back
Further listening: One day in the life and death of an AI chatbot
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Breaking up is never easy, but saying goodbye to your old clunky work tools, well, that's easy. |
| 0:06.0 | Just repeat after me. It's not me, it's definitely you, you rigid, unfriendly software. |
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| 0:35.4 | normal loo roll. It donates 50% of profits to help provide access to |
| 0:40.2 | clean water and toilets, which means every we is more of a... |
| 0:45.0 | And every number two is more of a number two. Switch to toilet paper that makes you feel... |
| 0:53.9 | Okay, you get the idea. |
| 0:57.4 | Who gives a crap? |
| 0:58.6 | Feel good toilet paper. |
| 1:04.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 1:07.5 | I'm Luke Jones. |
| 1:17.5 | It is, of course, cheating. It is of course cheating, but plenty of people have AI rights or at least part of their university coursework. Why even read a set text when a slim summary |
| 1:23.8 | can be generated for you? But is it starving students of actual learning, |
| 1:31.4 | letting your mind just slouch into laziness as chat GPT does all the heavy lifting? |
| 1:36.8 | Is it, as Professor Neil Ferguson says, making your brain obese. |
| 1:46.5 | He knows the university sector better than most. |
| 1:48.9 | He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
| 1:51.5 | He recently co-founded the University of Austin. |
| 1:54.1 | And he has a plan. |
... |
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