In a previous post, Afraid of Being Replaced by AI? we looked at research on the physical differences human brains have with AI neural networks. It revealed unique capabilities our brains have over AI.

My next post presented a cognitive training plan for mid-career professionals to use AI in ways that strengthen their irreplaceable human capabilities, not weaken them. In this post, we’ll look at ways students can use AI to strengthen their fight against AI for jobs.

Reports indicate that AI is disrupting the entry-level job market for college students. With recent articles predicting a broken career ladder and some saying an AI job apocalypse may already be here. While much is out of your control, there are things you can do to prepare. It takes a growth mindset and thinking past today’s assignment and grade.

It’s no secret AI provides easy, tempting ways to complete assignments. But the way you learn matters as much as the degree you receive. Think past today and focus on what will be best at graduation.

We can only leverage the unique capabilities of our human brains if we use and train them. Your goal in college isn’t to get an A. It’s to build a mind that’s sharp, adaptable, and creative within a discipline.

If you let AI lift the “cognitive weights,” you won’t build brainpower. This doesn’t mean avoid AI altogether. A savvy student will use it as a personal trainer to push, challenge, and help them achieve new levels of expertise. Here’s how to use AI in ways that accentuate not replace your unique human skills.

1. Reading & Research: AI as Guide & Tutor

Cognitive Workout: The struggle of reading a dense, difficult text and connecting its ideas to what you already know. This builds the rich, “messy” web of knowledge that creates insight.

AI Trap (Letting AI Do It): “Summarize this 35-page chapter for me.” You get the facts but skip the workout of critical reading and synthesis.

AI Savvy Student (Using AI as a Tool):

• Use AI as a Tour Guide (Before Reading): “I’m about to read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. What are the 3-5 core concepts I should look for? Define terms like ‘invisible hand’ and ‘division of labor’ for me.”
• Use AI as a Tutor (During Reading): When you hit a wall, don’t give up. Ask for help. “Can you explain this specific paragraph in simpler terms? I’m confused about the concept of ‘fiat currency’.”
• Use AI as a Quizmaster (After Reading): To check your own understanding, prompt: “Ask me five challenging questions about free-market philosophy. Don’t give me the answers until I try first.”

Result: AI helps you prepare to navigate the difficult terrain of learning, but you’re still the one thinkingh. You build the mental muscle of critical reading and information synthesis essential for knowledge-based careers.

2. Lectures & Notetaking: AI as Study Partner

Cognitive Workout: The act of listening, filtering what’s important, and synthesizing it into your own handwritten notes. This hardwires concepts into your memory through embodied cognition.

AI Trap (Letting AI Do It): Using an AI generated transcript as a substitute for taking your own notes. You become a passive recorder, not an active learner.

AI Savvy Student (Using AI as a Tool):

• Take Your Own Notes First: When you know AI’s not recording everything you’re more motivated to pay attention in the moment. The act of writing and drawing connections is core to learning.
• Use AI to Enhance Your Notes: After class, use AI to improve what you’ve already created. “Here are my messy notes from the lecture. Can you help me organize them into a clean outline for a study guide?”
• Use AI for Gap Analysis: “Here are the slides, lecture notes, study guide, and my notes. What key topics from the professor’s resources did I miss or cover sparingly?”

Result: You get the full cognitive benefit of live synthesis. Then, AI acts as a study partner, helping you organize, review, and spot weaknesses in your understanding. This can supplement a professor’s or TA’s office hours with a 24/7 tutor trained on your specific class.

3. Class Participation: AI as Private Debate Coach

Cognitive Workout: Articulating a half-formed idea, thinking on your feet, and responding to challenges from professors and peers. This builds mental agility, plus skills and practice in persuasive communication.

AI Trap (Letting AI Do It): Staying silent in class because you can ask AI for the “perfect” answer later, avoiding all risk.

AI Savvy Student (Using AI as a Tool):

• Use AI as a Sparring Partner: Before class, prepare for the debate. “I want to argue that the movie The Wolf of Wall Street fails to capture the nuances of the main character’s motivations in Jordan Belfort’s memoir. Act as someone who disagrees to challenge my position with counterarguments.”
• Use AI for Perspective-Taking: “I need to understand the ‘utilitarian’ ethical framework for my business ethics class. Explain it to me as a non-expert and then give a real-world scenario where it would conflict with ‘virtue ethics.'”

Result: You enter class discussion better prepared, more confident, and with a deeper understanding of multiple viewpoints. AI helps you build mental resilience to respond in unpredictable, live human debates. You build soft skills with your discipline’s hard skills.

4. Writing & Assignments: AI as A Sounding Board & Editor

Cognitive Workout: The struggle of starting with a blank page and building your own structured, logical, and original argument. This is a mental workout for causal and abstract reasoning skills.

AI Trap (Letting AI Do It): “Write an essay about the impact of social media on teenage mental health.” You get a paper, but don’t gain experience in learning how to think. It can also be academic dishonesty if you turn it in unchanged as your own work.

AI Savvy Student (Using AI as a Tool):

• Use it as an Idea Generator: “I’m writing about the 2007-8 financial crisis. Suggest 10 non-obvious research questions I could explore beyond the typical narrative.”
• Use it as an Outline Critic: After you create your own outline, ask for feedback. “Here’s my thesis and main points. Is it a logical flow? What’s the weakest argument?”
• Use it as a “Rubber Duck“: When a paragraph feels clunky, paste it in and ask: “What am I trying to say here? Help me rephrase this for clarity.”
• Use it as an Editor: After you’ve done the hard work, let it polish your creation. “Check this for grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, and inconsistent tone.” But don’t let AI replace your tone! Remember to maintain your unique voice.

Result: You maintain ownership of the core intellectual work: the research, the thinking, and the creation of the argument. AI serves as a collaborator that helps you brainstorm, test your logic, and polish your final product to make your own work even better.

A summary workout reminder on how to be more human as a student training for an AI saturated job market. Click on image to download a PDF.

With any AI use, keep in mind that you’re responsible for the final output. Fact-check all results. Even the best reasoning and deep research models hallucinate making up research, stats, and references. Also, check your university and professor’s AI use policies to avoid plagiarism. Follow university, professor and internship employer guidelines on data privacy and uploading copyrighted, sensitive, or proprietary material.

These are just a couple examples for these use cases. Review the AI Prompt Framework for more guidance on how to craft prompts that perform well. For more details on how AI can help or harm your learning, see the post and infographic that shows how AI Can Skip the Stages of the Cognitive Learning Process. See this post for a look at How AI Agents May Impact Marketing Jobs and this post for how you can prepare with AI Vibe Marketing.

This Was 75% Human Generated Content! 

The initial ideas were my own, so were beginning parts of a rough draft. I used Google Gemini 2.5 Pro Thinking for my research. I got better results when I asked the model to respond to my prompt again after running 10 miles. Thanks to Christopher Penn for his “Add a Banana” AI principle. That’s what helped send me in this training your brain direction which draws from my personal experience training for marathons. I added my own support articles, perspective on examples, and wrote in my own voice. Gemini 2.0 Flash generated the brain lifting weights graphic.