Shortcuts and scholarship: A cross-generational reflection on AI and academic formation

Generative AI is changing not just how academic work gets done, but whether the processes that build genuine understanding are happening at all. This essay, written collaboratively by an early career researcher and a senior scholar in communication and media studies, argues that the real risk is not that AI will replace researchers, but that it will quietly erode the conditions under which researchers are formed, and indeed, what counts as research process. When doctoral students can produce coherent, polished outputs without sustained reading, critical thinking, or sitting with difficulty and uncertainty, something important is lost: the slow, often uncomfortable process through which understanding develops. Drawing on communication theory, critical pedagogy, and political economy, we examine the distinction between AI as a thinking tool and AI as a substitute for thought. We also argue that meaningful change requires institutional reform, not just better pedagogy. The machines are doing exactly what they are designed to do. The question is what we are designing our universities to do.