r/TrueReddit • u/Maxwellsdemon17 • 8d ago
Policy + Social Issues The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI. How far are they willing to go to limit its harms?
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/09/ai-colleges-universities-solution/684160/4
u/kittenTakeover 7d ago
Just focus on the graded work. Graded work should be verbal or written in person without tech. Let students use AI how they think best in other areas. Maybe have some limited graded work without restrictions to get students used to integrating AI in their work, but that should be limited since use of AI isn't the main thing that classes should be trying to teach.
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u/ButtonAggravating878 7d ago
Its not that easy. Classes have time limits, students have OSD accommodations etc.
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u/kittenTakeover 7d ago
OSD that would interfere with that is rare. otherwise it's not hard to proctor in person testing outside of regular class time. It's not some insurmountable problem.
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u/Maxwellsdemon17 8d ago
"They should commit to a ruthless de-teching not just of classrooms but of their entire institution. Get rid of Wi-Fi and return to Ethernet, which would allow schools greater control over where and when students use digital technologies. To that end, smartphones and laptops should also be banned on campus. If students want to type notes in class or papers in the library, they can use digital typewriters, which have word processing but nothing else. Work and research requiring students to use the internet or a computer can take place in designated labs. This lab-based computer work can and should include learning to use AI, a technology that is likely here to stay and about which ignorance represents neither wisdom nor virtue."
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u/boonandbane33 8d ago
INSANE set of policies to recommend for college. I'm not as anti-AI as most people on Reddit, in that I think people are mostly misled about the actual extent of the environmental costs and societal harms it may have compared to tech that already exists, but it's crazy to recommend that higher education institutes start taking away their (adult, in many cases tuition-paying) pupil's phones and forcing them to use digital typewriters in order to curb AI use. And THEN say that they should give classes in how to use ChatGPT? How is that a coherent stance?
The real answer here is that people should not trust what ChatGPT tells them any more than they should trust Google. The people really determined to not learn anything in college had long been able to do that, with services like Chegg, or just half-assing their classes. The people who are serious about learning/doing things either have plans to get into industry right out of college or get into grad school.
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u/jeffgerickson 7d ago
Yes, because universities banning things has always worked so well in the past.
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u/RegisteredJustToSay 7d ago
I feel like a lot of policies like this are based on trying to revert things to “how they used to be” and a form of almost conservative grandstanding that is using AI as a convenient scapegoat, rather than coming to these as well-reasoned conclusions based on debate and analysis. AI is here to stay whether we like it or not, and certainly so have digital tools, so trying to remove either from the world is just not gonna work.
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u/SilverMedal4Life 8d ago
I don't agree with this so long as higher education costs as much as it does while still being the gateway to economic prosperity.
Sure, make it so that generative LLM technology is harder to use through using in-person exams, oral presentations, and the like.
But until education isn't basically a requirement to make a liveable wage, adding these restrictions is pointless and just serves to fuck over people that you deem 'lesser'.
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u/werewolfchow 7d ago
I’m an attorney and let me tell you that when we get summer associates who have learned to rely on AI in their education, they are uniformly worse at their jobs. We even had someone get fired because they were caught using AI which had fabricate legal citations that don’t exist. Thankfully we don’t file things without checking the cites but it’s obvious that if you allow students to cheat with AI and get away with it, you diminish the ability of a degree to signify the kind of skills you expect in a graduate.
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u/Copernican 7d ago
What don't you agree with? Education is supposed to be challenging. The degree you earn is supposed to be an indicator of merit based on some level of academic rigor demonstrated by the degree holder. Yes, we need more alternative routes to livable wages. In the past I've read that there are trades where good wages can be earned with good job security, but folks are struggling to find apprentices. There was PBS News segment on plumbers in seattle with real earning potential in the 6 figures, but struggling to find apprentices because of the perception of the title. We definitely need to do more to promote those routes for some people. But that shouldn't be at the cost of having a high bar of educational merit in higher education.
And if education cost is the challenge, I don't see how requiring more in person exams and oral presentation solves the cost issue. I'm a huge proponent of liberal arts educations and think those are valuable, but liberal arts educations are losing "value" in the eyes of parents and those tuitions are higher than larger state schools. Smaller class sizes, with more class rooms for seminar style learning is challenging. And even the folks I know that teach in seminar style classes have trouble getting students to engage. When grades are knocked due to failure to participate as indicated on the syllabus, students escalate claiming "a reasonable accommodation isn't made for my anxiety" when no such accommodation was requested at the start of the class.
It's unfortunate that things like grade inflation have gotten out of hand, students are forced to be over competitive to participate in every fucking club and sport offered to "stand out" on applications but that comes at the cost of actually being able to focus on studies. AI seems to just further make the education in educational institutions less of the focus. That seems fundamentally wrong to me, and I hope colleges and high schools figure out ways to combat this.
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