AI Cheating: What Should Teachers Do?

Rethinking AI and Education in the Humanities

To save the humanities, we need to rethink our assumptions about AI and education, according to Sigal Samuel's advice column. This week's question comes from a university teaching assistant who grades student writing and sees a lot of AI-generated content. They are working to develop assignments that are less tempting to use AI for, but they have limited ability to implement these policies.

The TA is concerned that taking course policy seriously would mean making many accusations, some of them false positives, for every assignment. They question how to think about enforcing rules that students don't take seriously, or letting things slide to build a classroom that feels less like an obstacle.

The Real Value of Humanities Education

The author argues that to understand the dilemma, we must consider the real value of a humanities education. While STEM fields justify their existence by the products they create, humanities departments now justify their existence by the products their students create, like literary interpretations and short films. However, this is due to the neoliberalization of the university, and that's never what humanities were supposed to be. According to philosopher Megan Fritts, their real aim is the “formation of human persons,” where the student is the product being created and recreated by the learning process.

Aristotle believed the goal of education was not to impart knowledge, but to cultivate virtues. Students see that generative AI proves the utilitarian vision for the humanities is a sham. The real solution is to be honest about what the humanities are for: cultivating students' character. The author suggests educators focus on helping students flourish, becoming their Aristotle. Practical wisdom, or phronesis, is what you can do to help students cultivate. It goes beyond general rules and involves making good judgments in complex situations. Students need this deliberation to navigate emerging technologies wisely.

Adding Friction Back In

Using generative AI threatens to short-circuit this process by removing friction, which is essential for cognitive exercise. Philosopher of technology Shannon Vallor stated that cognitive exercise is needed to develop practical wisdom. To help students retain and build their phronesis, friction must be added back in, providing opportunities to practice deliberating and choosing. Instead of a strict “no AI” policy, students could be given the choice to use AI or not, with those using AI required to write a reflection piece explaining their choice and how it changed their thinking. As a TA, one can prompt students to work their cognitive muscles in conversation or stage a debate about AI.

The author acknowledges the difficulty of this situation for educators and suggests that generative AI is an existential threat to humanities education as currently constituted. Humanities departments must shift or perish. All educators can do is make the choices that are left for them to make.