Statement on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in an Educational Setting
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a set of technologies largely misunderstood by the general public. Most commercially available AI engines use sophisticated algorithms to process data more efficiently than humans working with older, simpler data processing programs. Applications for AI are anywhere where big, complex data sets need speedy analysis to arrive at broad conclusions. AI can provide that, even if the responses are occasionally overly general and/or simply wrong. When AI is applied to large collections of human-written and/or AI-written language to produce desired texts (generative AI, or genAI), the algorithms can do a fair job of (re)producing human writing patterns. The tuning of these algorithms is an ongoing process, and the industry expects constant improvement. Hundreds of billions are being spent.
GenAI has applications across many industries. Business in general is perhaps the primary target for genAI. In less than a minute, an employee can have AI write a structured 10-page report on a potential vendor’s fit for a company. The employee can then tweak the report in less than an hour, and the entire process will end up taking a tenth of the time it would have without genAI. Communications with clients, partners, vendors, suppliers, distributors, legal, etc. can all be made much more efficient, giving the company the opportunity to reduce labor costs. Small business owners benefit in these ways as well, with the additional advantage of having a source of quick copy for marketing and advertising efforts, avoiding expensive third-party copywriters. genAI can produce customized forms, letters, memos, reports–pretty much anything that can be written and has examples available on the internet. The core value for all of these uses is increased productivity.
Students should learn how to manipulate genAI. GenAI will be/is an expected technology for new hires. For educators themselves, designing this training is not a problem. Training students to use genAI in a business setting is fairly straightforward: theory and practice, theory and practice.
AI Mediating Education
The difficulty of genAI in an educational setting starts with the core value of education: learning. Responsibility for appropriate use of genAI rests squarely on the student. It is the job of instructors to talk with students about the risks of using genAI. The problem for instructors is that the risks are abstract until the students get close to graduation, so some students tend to ignore the warning early on. And the risks won’t become fully realized until the student is on the job market or in the job. It’s difficult to get young students to believe in the existence of these risks. Yes, one can intellectually accept the theory that genAI can severely undermine one’s education, just as one can intellectually accept the theory of global warming but not really understand the developing reality of it until it is physically realized. It’s just hard for humans to think concretely beyond the next two weeks.
For students, the primary risk of genAI is the replacement of cognitive effort. The brain learns, and learning doesn’t stop regardless of the course you’re taking. And learning isn’t simply in collecting facts. Learning is developing associations between ideas and between words and ideas, both of which make the brain more flexible and creative. Learning is confirming or challenging existing theories/beliefs with each experience, each sentence written or read. It doesn’t matter what the subject is; any sort of reading or writing will benefit cognition. Any new experience. Thinking that it’s all about the product and not the process is called the “productivity mindset.” According to that mindset, the primary purpose of assigned reading and writing is completion-of-task and not engagement. Actual learning requires engagement.
An analogy: a golfer doesn’t go to the practice range to use a machine that hits balls with decent accuracy. The purpose of the driving range is not to have balls hit by whatever means necessary. The primary purposes of a driving range are to understand one’s body mechanics, to understand what an effective swing is, and to habituate effective swings through repetition. A person who uses a ball-hitting machine at the driving range will achieve balls being hit (productivity!). They will not advance in golfing skill and will likely do very badly at any tournament entered. And why would someone spend money (a lot of money) at the driving range just to watch a machine hit a ball? Your education is what you make of it. If you want it to be “just a piece of paper,” use the machine. If you want it to develop your skills and understanding significantly, use your brain. Feel the burn of struggling to make sense. Sense may not be there immediately, but it will arrive eventually. If you use genAI, it will never arrive.
Writing assignments in an educational setting are designed to push students into thinking about their subject, thinking critically about their subject, developing connections between their subject and their experiences, and thinking about their subject and the mechanics of the human and natural worlds (where those two worlds are not shared space). Writing facilitates all of that. It forces the mind to organize information and, in doing so, evaluate both the information and the connections that develop through cognitive processing. When the writing is turned toward an audience, to communicate ideas, writing has the benefit of forcing the writer to think critically about other people (readers), about their own relationship with those people. Indeed, when you write, you are writing yourself, your subjectivity, through word choice, syntax, assumptions, and absences. Writing, then, is a major tool for education, arguably the major tool when considering the entire academic project.
Is it safe to assume that the liberal arts and sciences mission is to help students understand the world in which they live, and not from a narrow, discipline- and/or culture-specific perspective, but from a wide range of perspectives, and that this process includes self-understanding as a subjectivity developed within specific conditions? If yes, then our mission should be to help students understand the outcomes of using genAI as a replacement for thought (cognitive processing). That’s what you’re reading right now, but it’s not our job to force you to do the beneficial thing. You have to take responsibility.
You want all that in a single sentence? When a student uses genAI, they skip the struggle of writing about ideas, and the struggle is where the learning occurs, so using genAI prevents learning. Using genAI also erodes confidence. If you are tempted to use genAI, please see your professor, a writing consultant, a subject-area tutor (if available), and/or me, the Writing Center Director (dleaton@truman.edu). Let’s take a breath and a step back, and then take two steps forward in a better direction. You’re not alone in this.
GenAI and the Writing Center
If you bring genAI-written work to the Writing Center, we won’t work with it. Our job isn’t to help genAI become a better writer; our job is to help human writers become better writers, regardless of their current skill. The writing consultants might point out that the writing “smells” like genAI and warn you that your professor might have the same response. We might then take a look at the assignment with you and develop a gameplan for your own writing/thinking.