Another academic year concludes in the age of artificial intelligence
(AI). The chatbots are certainly more capable: ChatGPT 5.4, Gemini 3.1,
and Opus 4.7 are extraordinary. However, though enthusiasts made much of
OpenClaw, it’ll be
a year or so before ordinary people are using Claude’s Computer
Cowork or OpenAI’s Operator.
But when they do, students will be able to direct agents to complete
their work without detection. For an essay, a student might specify:
“following the assignment instructions and rubric: develop a thesis,
find sources, read and summarize the sources, create an outline, and
write the prose; avoid the tell-tale signs of AI prose, use a humanizer,
and complete all steps with the pace and haphazardness of a human.”
Because I required my students to include a link
to their drafts’ histories and to document their AI usage—even
sharing their AI conversations—I already saw students use AI to complete
each one of those steps individually. That was just one thing I saw by
way of pangram.com and Process Feedback.
- obvious misconduct
- stupidly copying-and-pasting (and falling for a poison
pill)
- sneakily copying-and-typing (via “humanizer” plugin or by hand)
- there’s even Scrawl AI that can
write out assignments in a person’s handwriting
- definitely concerning (and bordering on misconduct)
- copying-and-pasting and then rewriting every paragraph
themselves
- asking for a thesis, sources, source summaries, and an outline, and
then genuinely writing (then possibly editing it in Grammarly)
- skillfully appropriate
- developing a novel thesis (“I’m interested in topic X, and I’m
thinking Y & Z, help me brainstorm.”),
- finding sources (“What are the best sources on X? Why are they the
best? Compare these to the sources in the Wikipedia article on the
topic.”)
- understanding the sources (“What is the novel contribution relative
to the literature? What were the methods, strengths, and
limitations?”)
- polishing their writing (“Here are common writing issues, as well as
my own foibles; critique this draft.”)
I share my own prompts
with students to stress that these are the result of many conversations
with AI and still should be the start of new interactions.
This summer I’m going to continue
adapting my courses to AI and the new cohort of AI
“native” (dependent) students. I will lessen the weight of
out-of-class writing by introducing low-stakes pop quizzes. I also plan
to introduce some “use AI appropriately” exercises, such as creating
self-tests and asking for critique.
Ultimately, though, I am not
optimistic about education. A few students will use AI well: those
who enjoy learning and who have the ability to focus and orchestrate
tasks, threads, and agents. Ironically, this group of students will
include those who were kept away from screens for much of their
childhoods. Otherwise, I fear AI will enfeeble many, accelerating the achievement
gap.
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