By: David Campos
Within my 3 years at Dominican, I’ve stepped into classes to see no clear regulation against AI use. More recently, I have taken classes where the Canvas page structure appeared somewhat AI-generated. I have also received feedback on assignments that gave the impression that they were just copied and pasted, potentially pulled straight from an AI model. Not to mention the frequent gloating around campus by students about how they’ll “just ask chat [GPT]” to finish up an assessment for them.
I’m aware of the many “benefits” of AI within industries, and this is the argument I come across the most when talking to people who are for AI use. Even within education, I know that professors and students at times advertise AI, insisting it helps in making study guides, brainstorming, or making things more accessible by cutting off intermediate steps. But this undercuts the value of making mistakes and wrestling with difficult concepts as an essential part of the learning process. I don’t think making things easier is compelling enough to begin inserting AI into educational systems.
For these reasons, I struggle to understand why this should be a new normal. I didn’t come into higher education to stray away from critical thinking; I came to train it. Seeing this consistent yielding to AI, it’s not hard to think of why students have become increasingly comfortable with utilizing it.
If the expectation is to be the best in these competitive fields, students want to achieve it. That is what gets rewarded: the end product, not the struggle. And if students suspect others of using AI to beat the curve, there’s now added pressure on them to use it. Place instructors normalizing AI in educational settings on top of this, and we’ve now begun to counter what education strives for.
Industries have been jumping the gun on AI and are going straight into an AI-integrated world, and universities have grown warm towards AI to prepare their students for their futures. Perhaps our degrees will be earned to be able to submit queries and spreadsheets to chat boxes, to receive help on how to structure our essays and PowerPoints, and to have less and less of a say in what we “create.”
But what gives our words, our projects, and arguments meaning, if not the individual experiences behind them? Our lives are far from simple daily tasks. We are each a cultivation of unique circumstances that inform our identities and values. Our work is our essence, and that is diminished when something artificial does it for us.
Think of the endless conversations being held between your work and those that come across it, now and forever. When we admire the work of greats, there’s no doubt that those pieces came from their own intellect, that a piece of their life’s grief, love, or torment resides within them. To look at it and say, “Wow, someone else has endured being human.” Ultimately, AI is an imitation: a claim without conviction, a voice disguised by a life never lived. Imagine this connection being severed in 200 years when our students are analyzing a “great piece of literature,” only for it to be mostly AI-generated.
Although the 5-page English essay that you have due in 3 hours might not be revered in 100 years’ time, you’re losing out on the vital exercises that make you a great writer.
Yes, AI can write a half-good argument, a riveting play, and it can produce a nice-looking presentation. What do we earn, though? We humans are quite egotistical in thinking we are much more than what AI might eventually take over. However, our one true superpower that sets us apart is our minds, our one-of-a-kind rationale. If we abandon that, I fear we will lose a bit of purpose and endanger ourselves by creating a reality where we no longer fully think for ourselves.
Now, I don’t believe an entirely dismissive attitude towards students who heavily utilize generative AI is the definitive answer. Most people, when confronted harshly, might feel prompted to defend themselves, and it might enforce AI use instead of helping them wean themselves off it. We must celebrate the acknowledgements made by these students regarding the ways in which AI could be harmful, especially in the realm of education. Additionally, we need to start having more conversations about what higher education is meant for and how it is that we’ve strayed from it long before we even begin to blend AI into schoolwork.
If anything good comes from AI’s presence, let it be that it might force us to reevaluate ourselves in deeper, more meaningful ways. I find myself seeing glimpses of this in action already, with people taking more action against AI use in certain settings, and it brings me hope.
So please, next time you sit down and start writing for an assignment, let yourself struggle. It’s quite literally the point.
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