On 20 October, Mateusz went back to his old high school in Myślenice (southern Poland), to talk with students and teachers about artificial intelligence. He opened with a provocative question: “Will we become less intelligent?”.

The talk looked at what generative AI does to learning and thinking. Mateusz explained the notion of “cognitive debt”: when we hand tasks such as writing, summarising or remembering to chatbots, we stop practising the skills ourselves. He also discussed how AI undermines trust between teachers and students.

The talk was not a call to give up technology. Mateusz offered practical principles for using AI well: as a tool that supports thinking, not one that replaces it.