Universities are embracing AI: will students get smarter or stop thinking?

Across the world’s universities, artificial intelligence is no longer an elective — it’s a reckoning. From Beijing to Columbus to Sydney, campuses are rethinking how students learn, test, and think in an age when machines can write essays, solve equations, and mimic understanding. Some schools are embracing AI as a teaching tool; others are drawing lines to protect human thought. As debate grows over ethics, learning, and dependence, one truth is clear: higher education is being rewritten. If you want a hint at the direction its heading, Helen Pearson with Nature has an in-depth look.