AI, Academia, Apathy – Chicago Maroon
When I left high school this past June, it was in shambles. Amid teachers being put on administrative leave for voicing their opinions and a head of school unwilling to address the Israel-Hamas war, one issue that seemed to fly under the radar was students’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the classroom. Teachers had widely differing policies when it came to the use of large language models (LLMs) in written work.
Some strongly advocated using ChatGPT for research and idea generation, while others scorned the very concept of AI. At points, it felt like I could walk into the cafeteria and see dozens of people prompting ChatGPT for help with their homework. While the school added a small paragraph in the student handbook about integrity and AI, limits on its use remained unclear and were ineffective at stopping students willing to bend the rules.
Exploring AI at UChicago
More than just policy, it seemed that there was no place to critically interrogate the future of LLMs and their implications for higher education. By my senior year, I had written multiple articles about the future of machine learning and writing, but it felt like I was shouting into a void that garnered no conversation in return.
When I arrived at UChicago, I expected a similar indifference to the topic that I was so interested in. This assumption was almost immediately proven wrong when my Language and the Human professor, Tomasz Zyglewicz, emailed our class and attached Ted Chiang’s New Yorker article on ChatGPT.
Classroom Discussions
After going over the course material and syllabus, Tomasz wrote the words “AGAINST,” “NEUTRAL,” and “FOR” on the chalkboard. He explained that instead of dictating the AI policy himself, he wanted to hear students’ opinions on using AI in our writing. I was pleasantly surprised, as none of my previous teachers had ever consulted us in this way, so I raised my hand almost immediately to respond to his prompt.
The Role of AI in Writing
I hold the belief that there is no point in fully banning the use of AI, as students will always find a way to use it if they are truly motivated to cheat, as I had seen in high school. While ChatGPT doesn’t live up to my standard of academic writing, it is enough for some people to get by on their work.
As I write this piece, OpenAI has just released their new ‘ChatGPT Pro’ subscription, costing avid AI users $200 a month to have unlimited access to their newest model, ‘o1 Pro.’ While OpenAI spent plenty of time in its launch video touting o1 Pro’s incredible reasoning and writing capabilities, I am left wondering if it has the ability to write essays with the same level of precision as a motivated student.
Conclusion
In the end, we settled on AI being permitted with citations, and I left feeling excited at the level of enthusiasm surrounding the conversation on AI and pedagogy. While it seems obvious that UChicago would attract students who enjoy learning and the process of fleshing out their thoughts in words, I still felt a sense of pride in the fact that at the very least, my Hum class believed in our own reasoning skills over a computer’s.
Are there people who will buy ChatGPT o1 Pro and use it on their assignments? Undoubtedly there will be, but I hope not at UChicago. And, while I still have over 11 quarters of UChicago to go, this first one gives me hope that I will continue to have enlightening conversations about the future of AI, teaching, and learning.
