“And so perfect parallel constructions fill the lecture halls, the take-home tests, the school newspapers, and perhaps even the idiom of student chatter.”
Excellent work, Owen. The argument reminds me quite a lot of Scott's Seeing Like a State. Here, AI in the classrooms makes teaching and learning legible, flattening differences for a much more reliable product. An awful vision of the future.
The culture surrounding student AI use and the pressures you're under has been so much missing from these discussions. Although, in broad contours, you're agreeing with a lot of the older voices pontificating on these matters, the honesty and incisiveness in adding context to what's happening is so valuable to read, as someone finishing up grad school and rolling the dice on professorhood. Well done.
I feel for your generation - born too late for the analog but too early for the Butlerian Jihad. Even though the film The Social Network convinced everyone back in 2010 that there is something shortsighted about the Silicon Valley vision, it's been full speed ahead ever since.
I'm tempted to hope that AI "adoption" is just hastening the breakdown of an already broken system--not like the university was in a super healthy place ten years ago--and something new will emerge from the ruins. Maybe it'll exaggerate the contradictions enough to force us to acknowledge them.
I don't know if it's realism or sentimentality, but I don't feel ready to part with the idea of the university regardless. I understand why people are interested in "creative destruction" and the like, but the university feels like our heritage in a meaningful way.
The AI horse has left the gate. But the future is not completely dim. Universities are smart to adapt to the new environment. Using AI effectively should be taught as a skill- often asking the right question is more of a learning experience than the getting the easy answer from AI. Excellent AI skills will be important in the future.
I fear this position reflects the mindless pap sold to educators a decade ago. "Learning how to use digital tools is going to be essential for the workforce of the future! Therefore every fourth grader should spend half their day staring at a glowing box."
It also fails to account for a clear reality: there is nothing to be TAUGHT about how to use AI. You can learn everything you need to know to use AI effectively in an afternoon. There is no value an educator can possibly add to one's resume by teaching AI "as a skill." It is intuitive and frictionless by design. I'm reminded of my computer engineer brother trying to turn off an iPad and his 4 year old daughter putting the cover on it to turn the screen off saying "You just close it, Daddy!" Or even my parent's professor in the 80s saying "It will be essential that you know how to use a punch-card interface in the future!" The skills you could theoretically teach will, by the time the pedagogy has been established, be second-nature for the incoming crop of students. Or, perhaps, obselete!
It is a comforting habit, not unlike sucking one's thumb or smoking meth, that educators fall into: Technology X threatens the future of education. We must fight Technology X! But we fail. So now we must integrate Technology X, for it shall be essential for the American Workforce of Tomorrow!
This habit is understandable, but self-destructive. Especially as user interfaces become streamlined such that there is effectively no learning curve. Remember: this inculcation of AI-first ideology has taken less than 5 years since the first LLMs went public. More helpful, I think, would be if especially higher education grappled with the reality that it is not 1955 anymore and if you are a professor your job is to teach undergrads. You are not a writer or a researcher, you are an educator. At best, an inspiring one. At worst, a cog in the diploma mill. But an educator regardless. Many folk still refuse to face that basic truth.
Excellent work, Owen. The argument reminds me quite a lot of Scott's Seeing Like a State. Here, AI in the classrooms makes teaching and learning legible, flattening differences for a much more reliable product. An awful vision of the future.
The culture surrounding student AI use and the pressures you're under has been so much missing from these discussions. Although, in broad contours, you're agreeing with a lot of the older voices pontificating on these matters, the honesty and incisiveness in adding context to what's happening is so valuable to read, as someone finishing up grad school and rolling the dice on professorhood. Well done.
Fantastic writing Owen.
I feel for your generation - born too late for the analog but too early for the Butlerian Jihad. Even though the film The Social Network convinced everyone back in 2010 that there is something shortsighted about the Silicon Valley vision, it's been full speed ahead ever since.
Excellent read!
I'm tempted to hope that AI "adoption" is just hastening the breakdown of an already broken system--not like the university was in a super healthy place ten years ago--and something new will emerge from the ruins. Maybe it'll exaggerate the contradictions enough to force us to acknowledge them.
I don't know if it's realism or sentimentality, but I don't feel ready to part with the idea of the university regardless. I understand why people are interested in "creative destruction" and the like, but the university feels like our heritage in a meaningful way.
The AI horse has left the gate. But the future is not completely dim. Universities are smart to adapt to the new environment. Using AI effectively should be taught as a skill- often asking the right question is more of a learning experience than the getting the easy answer from AI. Excellent AI skills will be important in the future.
I fear this position reflects the mindless pap sold to educators a decade ago. "Learning how to use digital tools is going to be essential for the workforce of the future! Therefore every fourth grader should spend half their day staring at a glowing box."
It also fails to account for a clear reality: there is nothing to be TAUGHT about how to use AI. You can learn everything you need to know to use AI effectively in an afternoon. There is no value an educator can possibly add to one's resume by teaching AI "as a skill." It is intuitive and frictionless by design. I'm reminded of my computer engineer brother trying to turn off an iPad and his 4 year old daughter putting the cover on it to turn the screen off saying "You just close it, Daddy!" Or even my parent's professor in the 80s saying "It will be essential that you know how to use a punch-card interface in the future!" The skills you could theoretically teach will, by the time the pedagogy has been established, be second-nature for the incoming crop of students. Or, perhaps, obselete!
It is a comforting habit, not unlike sucking one's thumb or smoking meth, that educators fall into: Technology X threatens the future of education. We must fight Technology X! But we fail. So now we must integrate Technology X, for it shall be essential for the American Workforce of Tomorrow!
This habit is understandable, but self-destructive. Especially as user interfaces become streamlined such that there is effectively no learning curve. Remember: this inculcation of AI-first ideology has taken less than 5 years since the first LLMs went public. More helpful, I think, would be if especially higher education grappled with the reality that it is not 1955 anymore and if you are a professor your job is to teach undergrads. You are not a writer or a researcher, you are an educator. At best, an inspiring one. At worst, a cog in the diploma mill. But an educator regardless. Many folk still refuse to face that basic truth.
What I saw in the freshman composition classroom last year made me step away for a semester, and honestly I don’t know if I’ll go back
After reading, the question that comes up for me is "what are schools for?"
And in that sense, they've been good at what they are "for" for a while: making a stable society.
But this same, stable society, speaking of North America mostly, has...
The highest chronic disease rates of all time
The highest depression and psychological disorder rates of all time
The worst environmental degradation (which is accelerating)
The most materialistic and possession oriented culture of all time
So, has education worked?
No. It hasn't. The institutions have created a false goodness that is predicated on destruction.
I don't think AI is going to make this any better, of course, but maybe it will reduce the relevancy of the institutions and teachers.
I think in many ways, personal discernment is what is at stake here, more than ever.
I'd like to see work, art, education, and institutions that promote this, above all else.