As governments, educators and policymakers debate how artificial intelligence should be integrated into classrooms and examinations, some of India’s highest-performing students have already moved ahead of the discussion.At a recent webinar organised by The Hindu on the use of AI in competitive examinations, toppers from the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), school board examinations and public service commission tests described how AI has become an integral part of their preparation. Their experiences suggest that AI is no longer a futuristic educational tool; it is already shaping how students learn, revise, and evaluate themselves.Yet their message was nuanced. While AI has become a valuable study companion, they were unanimous that it cannot replace independent thinking.Sounding board, not solution providerAmong the most compelling voices was Shubham Kumar, the JEE Advanced topper, who drew a clear distinction between using AI as an aid and allowing it to do the intellectual heavy lifting.“I generally did not use AI for problem solving because that was my own task — the very specific task for which I was giving the examination,” he said.Instead, he used tools such as NotebookLM to process textbooks, coaching modules and laboratory manuals. By uploading study material, he generated quizzes, summaries and revision notes that helped him test his understanding.“I used to give PDFs of chemistry books and coaching modules so that it could create quizzes, facts and summaries. I would ask it to generate quizzes containing the rarest facts from a chapter to see whether I had completely learned it or not,” he explained.Even when dealing with difficult physics or mathematics questions, AI functioned more as a sounding board than a solution provider.“If I had intuition about a second method but was not able to implement it, I would ask what was wrong in that method or how I could approach the problem through it,” he said.Sparring partnerGaurika Kapoor, a board examination topper, argued that many students are using AI incorrectly.“People have started using AI as a vending machine. You put in a prompt, take a ready-made answer and call it a day,” she observed.Rather than treating AI as an answer generator, she used it as what she called a “sparring partner” and an “auditor”. While preparing accountancy papers, she uploaded her answers and asked AI systems to identify mistakes and gaps.“Using it as a sparring partner and using it to test your system and grill your weak points made it easy for me to sharpen the areas where I may have been weak,” she said.Ms. Kapoor also used AI-powered tools to assist with presentations, visualisations and research projects. However, she warned against depending on AI in subjects that require creativity and personal expression.“In subjects like English, people used AI to write essays and answers. Teachers could easily identify it. It hampers originality and creativity,” she said.Her most striking observation captured the changing educational landscape.“AI will not replace students necessarily, but students who know AI can genuinely replace those who don’t.”Personal assistant, rather than a teacherKabeer Chhillar, another top JEE performer, viewed AI as a personal assistant rather than a teacher.“We didn’t really use AI as a teacher. We used it more as a personal assistant. All the work we didn’t want to do ourselves because it was too tedious, we would ask AI to do,” he said.Mr. Kumar agreed, noting that AI’s greatest contribution was saving time by handling secondary tasks. He used it to identify relevant books and chapters, organise study resources and even convert PDF question papers into timed computer-based test formats that closely resembled the actual JEE examination environment.A recurring theme during the discussion was whether AI could help bridge educational inequalities, particularly for students from smaller towns and rural areas who may not have access to expensive coaching institutes.Mr. Kumar, who comes from a small town, believes it can.“AI can overcome the barriers which are currently present if we instruct it the right way,” he said.He described using AI not only for academics but also to improve communication, draft messages and seek guidance when interacting with teachers. More importantly, it helped him navigate the overwhelming volume of study material available to aspirants.According to AI expert Apurv Mehra, accessibility may prove to be AI’s most transformative feature. Beyond affordability, AI can help students learn in their preferred language.“A lot of students use AI to break down a concept and understand it in their language of choice. You effectively have a 24/7 smart translator who can explain a complex topic at your level,” he said.The webinar also highlighted that using AI effectively requires learning a new skill: prompting. Mr. Kumar admitted that he initially struggled to frame prompts that produced useful results.“Slowly and slowly, I learned the technique of prompting AI,” he said.By providing examples from previous years’ examination papers, he was able to guide AI systems to generate more relevant questions and study material.Yet the students were equally candid about AI’s limitations. They encountered hallucinations, inaccuracies and biases in responses. Mr. Chhillar recalled instances where AI repeatedly produced a commonly discussed chemistry reaction while overlooking a less familiar but equally important alternative because it appeared less frequently in training data.The lesson from India’s toppers was clear. AI can accelerate learning, personalise revision and expand access to quality educational support. But success still depends on the student’s ability to question, verify and think independently. In the age of artificial intelligence, the most effective learners may not be those who rely on AI the most, but those who know how to use it wisely.