What 370,000 student essays reveal about AI’s impact on creativity

Source: Project Liberty SubstackJune 16, 2026

“For the first time in human history, we have a technology that can generate words separately from the thoughts they represent.”

Rebecca Winthrop wrote those words in a recent New York Times op-ed on AI and creativity. Winthrop, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, researches education and the skills young people need to thrive in work, life, and as constructive citizens.

There is a growing body of research to show how AI homogenizes human creativity, where people become estranged from their own thoughts, and AI erodes the very judgment we will need to set its limits.

In this newsletter, we consider the relationship between thinking and writing, and whether technological advances spell the end of creativity, or just shift its frontier.

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