Artificial intelligence is changing the world – including UCLA. We must make sure – for our future careers and for our college education – that the university is getting the implementation of AI right.

The 2026 Senior Survey, administered each year on MyUCLA to graduating students, asked, “How much, if any, would you be willing to pay quarterly in increased Instructional Enhancement Initiative (IEI) fees, for better access to AI and other digital learning tools?” The choices on this question ranged from $0 to more than $100.

To be sure, AI can be an asset in some circumstances. The workforce is adopting AI quickly, and some universities are embracing the tool, too, so their graduates don’t fall behind.

[Related: Opinion: UCLA must better prepare students, adapt to AI’s role in job market]

But AI poses a serious threat to our ability to learn. The skills we develop during a college education, such as critical thinking and writing, are severely restricted by AI use in the classroom. UCLA must restrict AI in the classroom to ensure that students continue to receive the quality education it can offer.

AI skills can help make tasks easier, but if UCLA graduates are incapable of completing difficult assignments in the classroom, it might prove catastrophic in the workplace.

“It’s my worst nightmare to have more AI tools accessible to students,” said John Branstetter, a continuing lecturer in political science. “The last four years are fundamentally different from the preceding, however long I’ve been doing this. It’s a radical, fundamental change.”

For some students, the value of AI – and its place in schools – is apparent.

“I know that I would pay because I think AI is an amazing tool, especially for learning,” said Narek Karayan, a rising second-year electrical engineering student. “With very minimal knowledge, someone could go and, with a little bit of research, get a lot done.”

Educators assign tasks that improve a skill set or perspective, Branstetter said. But AI gets in the way of that, he added.

“So much of this comes from a misunderstanding of what the point of an assignment is,” Branstetter said. “It’s not to produce a thing, right? It’s not to get some end result that’s, in itself, a useful thing. The process is the point, and there’s no way that AI tools can be helpful in doing that.”

People learn best when they have hands-on interaction with the subject matter. AI can deprive students of that capability by shortcutting the learning process. AI makes tasks easier, but the point of education is to allow students to grow by accomplishing progressively harder tasks – AI makes that obsolete.

Eric Wells, the associate vice provost and chief of staff at the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center, said in an emailed statement that the university is encouraging cautious AI use for lecturers and students. UCLA invests in a decentralized model, with individual schools and departments allocating technology resources, he added.

“This enables the university to assess where AI substantively enhances teaching, learning and research, as well as where stronger safeguards or clearer guidance may be required,” Wells said in the statement.

The solution to this academic dilemma does not have to be a complete repudiation of AI; the university should encourage students to use AI for other pursuits. But this exploration should occur outside the classroom, using skills students could only gain from an AI-free teaching environment. Learning how to use AI should be an individual, sought-out pursuit, not a shortcut dropped into students’ hands.

If UCLA administrators don’t crack down, AI use will continue to pollute our education.

So if the Senior Survey is an indication of what’s to come, the quality of a UCLA degree could be on a downward trajectory. The university won’t improve the education it offers by increasing funding for AI tools – it will do that by operating classrooms that don’t allow students to outsource their thinking to a machine.