IIT Kharagpur professor warns AI doing assignments weakens learning, promotes Fermi AI Tutor

Plaban Kumar Bhowmick, a professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at IIT Kharagpur and principal investigator of the National Digital Library of India, warned that students who use AI to complete assignments may miss the learning process itself. He distinguished cognitive offloading from cognitive scaffolding and presented the free Fermi AI Tutor as a model for guided, independent learning in a post shared by IIT Kharagpur on X.

The statement comes from an AI department professor at a leading Indian technical institute who also leads the National Digital Library of India, and its distinction may shape how teachers and product designers evaluate AI tutoring tools: tools that give answers directly may replace student thinking, while scaffolding-style guidance may preserve the problem-solving process. The original text provides no learning-outcome data or independent research on Fermi AI Tutor, so the judgment still needs verification through adoption scope and pilot results. Teachers and product designers may focus more on whether AI tools preserve students' thinking steps rather than only on answer generation. Parents and students choosing AI tutoring tools may be guided to distinguish products that give answers directly from those that use guided questioning.