THE INFLUENCE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This essay analyzes the influence of artificial intelligence on the development of students' critical thinking skills. Today, digital technologies, and especially generative artificial intelligence tools, are changing how students search for information, write texts, complete assignments, ask questions, and construct knowledge in school. From an argumentative and documentary perspective, artificial intelligence can be a useful pedagogical tool; it helps explore ideas, adapt learning, review arguments, and compare sources. However, artificial intelligence can also affect students' autonomy when used mechanically, dependently, or without reflection. Therefore, critical thinking must be a practice that requires questioning, analyzing, debating, arguing, and making decisions based on one's own judgment. Critical thinking compels students to use their own judgment. The essay argues that the challenge for schools is not simply to permit or prohibit artificial intelligence, but to teach students how to use it ethically, pedagogically, and humanely. Students learn to evaluate information, identify errors and signs, construct ideas, and use technology to support thinking, not as a substitute for it. We conclude that artificial intelligence strengthens critical thinking in schools; this strengthening is achieved by integrating artificial intelligence through teaching practices that encourage reflection, adapt to the context, and aim to develop students who are independent, responsible, and capable of critically understanding the digital world.