After three decades of university education, you might think that I would feel confident and comfortable about this new school year, right?
Fake.
With the advent of AI, I am certainly more short than ever. It is not only a question of perplexity and uncertainty. It is filled with sorrow. Deep as well.
The hostile hold of AI on campus
The last semester, I felt like I was struck by a tsunami of dishonesty students. It was enrageing, yes, but more than that, it was completely demoralizing. Just as tsunamis are erosive and generate debris which are completely destructive for the natural environment and the communities that we live in, the use of AI students, coupled with their categorical denial of using it, is devastating for the landscape of higher education. The ravage is trusted and creates a contradictory relationship between students and teachers.
I have a good number of former students with whom I appreciate a deep friendship. I have hundreds of others who have stayed in contact with me, and it ravies me endlessly to hear them with career and life updates. When the students reach out to thank me, I never tire of hearing these things in rehearsal: that in my classes, they learned to write, that they had to transform solid and significant papers with original ideas and that they discovered their own unique voice.
Although there are many things that have changed in university experience, one thing that has remained the same is that college is a rite of passage. This time of training to perfect your individuality is considerably compromised by hyper-reliance on technology, where students try to look like everyone, and through AI, where their papers are not only formula, hollow and flattened, but also most often, simply incorrect.
Basically, AI is predatory. Not only does it depend and the exploitation of creative talents of real authors, it also attacks the environment and the fears of people. Students feel bank and frightened to articulate their own thoughts and use AI to develop personal reflections.
This week, I deleted a student post on an online discussion forum because he was riddled with AI and was completely incorrect, including passages from the book that do not even exist. When I spoke with her, she tried to deny using AI and said that she just used a grammar application and that she wanted her message to “sound a little more professional”. It was my answer to her: “The problem is that errors do not concern grammar. Errors are the quotes that are not real, and there are no page numbers either. Make sure you don’t try anything on your paper. It won’t work. Do it using your own brain.
Everywhere in my news feed, articles on how we have to integrate AI not only in our professional lives, but also our house and our personal life. I think of myself, what is the point of being a person? What is humanity anyway? I can only imagine that if I was a college student, these urgent questions would be much more amplified.
Students look
A fabulous student, Gracie, sent me a text during the summer saying that she could not believe that the school starts again so early and that she is looking forward to graduating. I reminded her that she had just finished the second year and resist everything rushing, that it is a special moment, that there is magic at university. And then she shared with me the feeling of despair that she feels not only on the state of the world but also on too much of her classmates who cannot think by themselves.
Gracie is the same student who told me last fall that she was relieved not to need attendance and phones prohibited in class. The best students like Gracie see what I am trying to do – to help them develop the confidence necessary to be in difficult conversations and ask questions without allowing themselves to scroll. It is a kind of resiolialization.
Students look at universities on academic integrity while rushing to be THE The institution exceeded others in the way they generate AI, demand and buy it. This is similar to having to listen to the elderly preaching to develop healthy sexuality and then discover their porn dependence. In both situations, there is objectification, alienation and an absence of authentic creativity. If you reduce it all to an empty charade, it becomes one.
Locate responses, creativity and hope
It is a generation of students with the most to lose because they have reached age in the middle of the pandemic, dependence on screen, the disdain of society for higher education and a political and technological environment of division which attacks their inability to settle fiction. They have everything to gain from break, reflection and difficulty, and not to count on the push of a button for instant results. From that, they can learn powerful lessons on discernment.
Academic problems and skills essential readings
People use AI to ensure that their work sounds like something else. This is what happens when you live in a country of filters. Sometimes we need the original and fleshy original. Writing is to come and know what we think and know. AI dislodges the process, pushing students to wrongly believe that thought, learning, writing and interrogations are external activities.
In my new book, The full UI refer to college as a Hope Structure. By that, I mean that it is where and when the students learn ways to locate and cultivate hope in themselves and in their future. The interest of the college is that students find answers by themselves and in themselves. I have dislodged the hope. We cannot leave it.
