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Source: People's Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) — From editing posts on social media and organizing lecture notes to expressing our thoughts on any topic, nowadays, as artificial intelligence (AI) is deeply integrated into people's studies, work, and daily life scenarios, we increasingly resort to using AI to solve almost all problems without even thinking about it.
According to a recent survey in China, the vast majority of respondents, especially young people, are concerned that over-reliance on AI will lead to mental inertia, and also wonder how to effectively use AI tools in the age of AI.
ALMIGHTY ASSISTANT
The survey was conducted by the newspaper Zhongguo Qingnianbao (Chinese Youth News) in conjunction with the website wenjuan.com among 1,334 people, 94 percent of whom were students and employed. According to the results, over half (56.7 percent) of respondents use AI daily, 24.8 percent of whom use it several times a day, and only 1.6 percent had never used it before.
People most often use AI for content creation, including creative writing and marketing copywriting /58.5%/. AI is also used as an assistant in personal life, including in the field of weather consultations and acquiring new knowledge /56.0%/, as well as to facilitate studying /45.3%/, developing travel plans /36.6%/, emotional support /26.2%/, translation from and into foreign languages /24.7%/, mental health support /23.8%/, design and creation of posters and videos /22.5%/.
Liu Zeguang, a second-year student at a Beijing university, uses AI eight to nine times a day. "AI is now a great helper for me. I use it for searching information, processing data, checking homework answers, and even chatting with people," he shared.
Healthcare worker Wang Xiaoxiao created a special chat with an AI, where she shared her daily routines and concerns. She says the AI's responses sometimes calm her down.
According to a report by the China Network Informatics Center, as of June 2025, the number of generative AI users in China reached 515 million, and its penetration rate was already 36.5%.
ANXIETY IN THE AI AGE
However, the potential negative impact of long-term dependence on AI has already sparked considerable concern among the Chinese public. The survey also found that 71.7 percent of respondents are concerned that AI dependence will lead to mental inertia. It turns out that the younger the respondents, the more concerned they are: 78.5 percent and 71.9 percent of respondents born in the 2000s and 1990s, respectively, expressed concern.
"While I used to turn to books and other literary sources myself, systematizing and summarizing information to understand a particular issue, now with the help of AI you can instantly get an answer to any question," said Wang Xiaoxiao, noting that the effectiveness of AI is very helpful, but also makes her begin to reflect on the meaning of human thought.
Moreover, a similar situation involving schoolchildren, who are going through a crucial period of their growth, requires increased vigilance. According to Ma, a resident of Cangzhou, Hebei Province (Northern China), her son, a fourth-grader, asked the AI all the homework questions for core subjects—math, Chinese, and English—and received answers immediately. He copied and wrote them down in his notebook, making virtually no corrections. With the AI's help, the boy easily completed his homework, yet he failed to achieve satisfactory results on his exams.
"AI can give children answers, but it doesn't teach them the problem-solving thought process that is the foundation of learning," said Li Jiali, a primary school teacher in Cangzhou, adding that while she was once checking her students' math homework, she discovered that more than a dozen of them had identical steps for solving a problem. It turned out that all these students had used the same AI program and had directly copied standard answers.
“What worries me most is not that students copy answers for homework, but that they lose the will to think independently,” the teacher worries.
According to some educators, students who rely excessively on AI may also experience impaired concentration and increased anxiety in the face of challenges. "They're accustomed to receiving quick answers from AI, and when faced with a question for which there's no ready answer, they can become extremely confused."
A CALL TO INDEPENDENT THINKING
According to the aforementioned survey, 60.8 percent of respondents cited a lack of independent thinking as possible reasons for easily becoming dependent on AI, while 55.8 percent cited a tendency to avoid solving complex problems.
“There are significant differences in the thinking mechanisms of the human brain and AI,” Zhang Chaoyang, a Chinese entrepreneur and founder of the internet company Sohu, noted on the sidelines of the Wuzhen Summit of the World Internet Conference 2025, warning that people should not give up their ability to think and remember independently.
"To truly understand anything, learning and inference must be conducted in a manner consistent with the human brain's thought processes. The knowledge stored in the brain is the foundation for deep thinking, and overreliance on AI will hinder the development of logical thinking," he said.
Moreover, overreliance on AI not only weakens cognitive abilities but can also lead to errors due to blind acceptance of AI-provided answers. The survey also showed that 60.2 percent of respondents trust AI responses, while less than 40 percent of them stated they were willing to rationally analyze the information they received.
"AI is like a double-edged sword. If you use it well, you'll achieve maximum success with minimal effort. If you rely on it blindly, it can lead you astray," said Liu Zeguang. He believes that in the AI era, people most need to develop their AI skills, including the ability to compare and analyze information from multiple sources, as well as to think and make decisions independently.
Some educators believe it's more important to teach students how to use AI effectively in educational scenarios. Efforts should be made to create a learning environment that encourages students to think deeply. They suggest developing more open-ended and practical tasks that don't have definitive answers and can't be immediately solved using AI to effectively stimulate students' independent thinking.
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