How to Maintain Effort in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

When a student can solve a problem in seconds with ChatGPT, what's the point of still making an effort? That question seems logical, but it hides a trap: If we let artificial intelligence do our thinking for us, we not only lose the habit of making an effort, but also the ability to truly learn. Here comes the twist: Talent isn't something fixed that you're born with; it's something that you cultivate—and AI can be either a shortcut that weakens you or a tool that empowers you, depending on how you use it. Carol Dweck, a psychologist who has spent decades studying the “growth mindset,” found that people who believe they can improve through practice and strategy—rather than relying solely on innate talent—end up tackling tough challenges, making mistakes without fear, and learning more. In her studies, students with a growth mindset asked for specific advice on how to improve and did not view mistakes as failures, but rather as signals to course-correct. Here's a fact for your next conversation: In the 2022 PISA tests in Spain, students with a growth mindset scored up to 7 points higher in mathematics than those who believed talent to be fixed, and they also reported less anxiety before the exams. But a growth mindset doesn't just appear on its own: it is trained. This is where deliberate practice comes in, a concept developed by Anders Ericsson that goes far beyond routinely repeating tasks. Imagine a child reading the same story over and over again to improve speed: that is normal practice, and, in the long run, boring. In contrast, deliberate practice would involve choosing three difficult sentences, practicing only the pronunciation of the “r” sound, correcting mistakes immediately, and repeating the exercise until the child notices improvement. Here's a concrete example from college: Instead of taking a thousand multiple-choice exams, a health sciences student focuses on writing two alternative hypotheses for a clinical case, justifies them, and receives questions—not solutions—from a professor or a well-programmed AI. Here's the key point: AI is not useful if it only provides answers. It is useful when it becomes a kind of digital Socratic tutor that asks questions, challenges, and forces you to think out loud. This is what they did in the IA-LOCOM project: In a physical therapy class, students proposed a diagnosis, and the AI responded only with questions, such as “How do you justify this choice?” or “What variables are you leaving out?” The activity ended only when the reasoning was truly sound. No one evaluated automatic scores: the final quality was always judged by a human instructor. In this way, AI becomes an ally in cultivating a growth mindset; the student learns that their own questions and corrections are the path to progress, not some miracle of the machine. However, there is a risk that is rarely discussed: if we use AI as a crutch for everything, we lose the habit of making mistakes and correcting ourselves. A mental laziness sets in that, in the long run, makes us less resilient and less creative. Now imagine the future of universities: those who combine curiosity (questioning AI's answers), resilience (learning from every mistake), and creativity (going beyond what is programmed) will succeed. Tomorrow, true talent won't be about who uses AI best, but about who surpasses it through conscious effort and a passion for learning. Let's take away this: In the age of artificial intelligence, deliberate effort and a growth mindset are not optional—they are the only things that make you irreplaceable. If, after listening to this, you realize that your way of learning can change, you can mark it with I'm In in Lara Notes: that way, you declare that this idea is now part of you. And if you find this conversation worth sharing with someone outside of the screen, in Lara Notes you can also record it with Shared Offline: this way, you tag the person you discussed the topic with, and both of you remember that this conversation was important. This content comes from The Conversation and has saved you 1 minute of reading time.