As India’s board exam season intensifies each year, a quieter shift is unfolding alongside. Increasingly, students are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) as their first point of reference, often before they speak with parents, teachers, or school counsellors. From exploring career pathways and shortlisting universities to understanding application requirements, AI is no longer just a support tool, but the starting point of the decision-making journey. This is not simply a change in tools. It is a shift in where decision-making begins.
Unexamined reliance
The appeal of AI is clear. It is immediate, responsive, and non-judgmental. For students navigating uncertainty, especially during high-stakes moments, this accessibility feels reassuring. But information alone does not lead to informed decisions. Career choices are deeply personal. They are shaped by a student’s interests, values, exposure, family context, and evolving sense of self. AI can organise information, but it cannot fully understand the lived realities behind a student’s choices.
Global research from organisations such as OECD and UNESCO highlights that while AI can enhance access to information, it cannot replace human judgment, contextual understanding, or socio-emotional support in learning and decision-making environments. What is emerging, therefore, is not a problem of access, but a growing risk of unexamined reliance.
One of the less visible risks of AI-led guidance is the confidence with which it presents its responses. For a student still developing decision-making frameworks, this can create an illusion of clarity. Without the ability to question or contextualise these responses, they may begin to form conclusions that feel informed but are not fully understood. Despite having access to vast amounts of information, many continue to struggle with self-awareness, clarity of direction, and the ability to connect choices to long-term outcomes. This is where the role of structured, human-led guidance becomes critical.
How to respond
If AI is now part of the student journey, the response cannot be to resist it. It must be to build around it with intention.
First, we must move beyond digital access to decision literacy. Students need the ability to question, interpret, and reflect. Knowing how to ask better questions is becoming as important as finding answers.
Second, educational institutions must embed structured guidance earlier and more consistently. Guidance should not be positioned as a one-time intervention but should be an ongoing, experiential process that helps students build awareness, exposure, and agency over time.
Third, the role of counsellors is evolving. They are no longer the first source of information but are interpreters, facilitators, and anchors. Their role is to help students make sense of what they are seeing, validate what aligns, and challenge what does not. This shift does not reduce the importance of counsellors. It makes their role more essential than ever.
At its core, making decisions about colleges and careers is not an information problem. Students today have more answers than ever before. What they need is perspective, reassurance, and the confidence to navigate uncertainty. This is where human guidance becomes paramount.
A trusted adult — whether a counsellor, teacher, or parent — brings something no system can replicate. They understand nuance. They ask questions that go beyond the obvious. They recognise hesitation, even when a student cannot fully express it. AI can support this journey. It can expand access and open up possibilities. But it cannot replace the trust, context, and human connection that meaningful decision-making depends on.
The responsibility, therefore, is to ensure that students do not navigate this shift alone. As systems evolve, so must the structures around them. Institutions, families, and counsellors must work together to ensure that access to information is matched with the ability to interpret it.
In an increasingly complex world, guidance cannot be outsourced entirely to algorithms. It must remain a shared responsibility, supported by technology, but grounded in human understanding.
The writer is the Executive Director of IC3 Institute.
Published – August 30, 2026 12:00 pm IST
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