“Even as some instructors remain fervently opposed to chatbots, other writing and English professors are trying to improve them,” observed a recent New York Times article, “AI Is Coming to Class.” At the heart of the article is a debate now unfolding across higher education: whether— and how — university students should be taught to properly use generative AI.
The article illustrates this debate through the first-year writing program at Barnard College, which generally bans generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini — systems that can readily draft paragraphs, conduct research, and compose essays. The program’s policy warns students that AI tools are “often factually wrong” and “deeply problematic,” perpetuating misogyny as well as racial and cultural biases.
Yet the program has made an exception for Benjamin Breyer, a senior lecturer in Barnard’s English Department, who is determined to see whether AI can supplement, rather than short-circuit, students’ efforts to learn academic writing. In doing so, Breyer represents a growing group of faculty who are experimenting with how AI might be used constructively — even as many of their colleagues remain firmly opposed.
I am particularly interested in this debate because it strongly echoes my own early experiences with computers as a physics student in the 1960s — a time when the legitimacy of using machines as intellectual tools was also very much in question. Let me explain. (more…)