Cognitive and AI scientists call to reject uncritical adoption of AI in academia (www.bloodinthemachine.com)

A coalition of cognitive scientists and AI researchers from universities in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the U.S. has published a position paper titled “Against the Uncritical Adoption of ‘AI’ Technologies in Academia,” urging universities to reject or tightly constrain commercial AI products in teaching and research. Building on an earlier open letter signed by over 1,100 academics, the paper argues that widespread, vendor-driven adoption—bundled software, non-consensual updates, and black‑box models—risks deskilling students, encouraging cognitive offloading, reducing retention and critical thinking, and compromising scientific integrity and academic freedom. For the AI/ML community the paper is both a critique and a call to action: it dismantles industry marketing frames, highlights technical harms (opacity, vendor lock‑in, and the infiltration of proprietary models into curricula and publication pipelines), and urges institutions to reassess procurement, financial ties, and classroom practices. Because many authors work inside AI labs, the critique carries technical credibility and could shift departmental policy, pedagogy, and research standards—prompting stricter evaluation of model transparency, reproducibility, data governance, and the educational impacts of automation rather than uncritical deployment.