Artificial intelligence has rapidly infiltrated higher education throughout the last few years. It has allowed students to trade critical thinking and creativity for a system that permits them to cruise through work without a second thought.
At its extreme, this technology minimizes genuine learning, pushing hard work — and the actual use of your brain — to the wayside.
To adjust to this evolving state of education, many professors have taken to a staunch ban on AI use to complete school work. However, it appears some educators have fallen victim to the crutch that AI provides, deciding to assign AI-reliant assignments to students.
Including AI in curricula implies an exceedingly hypocritical message that “students can’t use it but that doesn’t mean we can’t.” Worse, it suggests they’d rather offload their job to a machine than actually teach students real, human-produced content.
It is one thing to use AI-driven platforms to aid in creating lesson plans or for general organizational practices, as teachers are grossly overworked and underpaid — it’s another to supplement your actual teaching with AI.
Rutgers School of Communication and Information studied this topic extensively, writing, “While AI tools could be beneficial to educators, it is important for us to remember that the technology is not a savior. These tools are not neutral, and the biases present in the data and algorithms can perpetuate inequalities in education.”
Casey Goeller, a professor at California State University-Long Beach is a passionate advocate for assigning students work that has an AI component. In an interview with California Student Journalism Corps, Goeller said, “If we don’t help our students understand AI before they escape this place, they’re going to get into the workforce where it’s there.”
His argument rests on the belief that if one of his students enters a profession without a working knowledge of AI, they will be at a disadvantage to someone with the same degree and an understanding of the technology.
Goeller went as far as to slam other teachers who don’t believe in the implementation of AI in curricula, saying, “Tomorrow morning, get up really early and stop the sun from coming up, because that’s how inevitable AI is.”
Just because AI is becoming more readily available in society doesn’t mean individuals can’t push back against it. At the very least, AI should not be the first route taken when approaching an academic or professional matter. Students should be encouraged by peers and by educators to go out into the world with an open mind, eager to discover things for themselves.
A fundamental part of any learning process is being equipped with an inherent curiosity in the concepts being studied. If AI becomes commonplace in education, unintentionally or not, it expresses a lack of care and competency in learning.
With as much misinformation present in a largely digital age, it is becoming more relevant by the day to have a working skillset in research and the ability to fact-check.
Instead of relying on technologically-generated answers that are not wholly accurate, students should approach assignments with the hope of gaining long-term knowledge in their field — and professors should be perpetuating these standards.
If need be, there are plenty of opportunities for individuals to familiarize themselves with AI, especially if platforms continue on their current trajectory. Nevertheless, education deserves to be a sanctuary from this.
In a world as politically and socially divisive as it is now, critical thinking and human connection desperately need to make a resurgence. As students, as educators and as people, we need to collectively advocate for original thought and innovation that reverberates with a human pulse.
