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We’ve all heard the stories of how generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have made cheating rampant on college campuses and the discomfort it’s created among students and professors. But looking at the technology more broadly – and crucially, where it’s going – raises even more profound questions about the role of the university, write scholars Nir Eisikovits and Jacob Burley.
Both researchers at the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston, Eisikovits and Burley map out how AI is already being used on campus and make the case that increasing automation – touching everything from teaching to generating scientific research – undermines the very practices that sustain teaching, research and learning.
AI can indeed help with the production of papers, scientific discoveries and degrees. But what’s lost along that path, they argue, is something more fundamental – “an ecosystem that reliably forms human expertise and judgment.” It’s a thought-provoking piece, one of a series we’ve published covering AI’s impact on education.
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Martin LaMonica
Director of Editorial Projects and Newsletters
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Will AI hollow out the pipeline of students, researchers and faculty that is the basis of today’s universities?
Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Nir Eisikovits, UMass Boston; Jacob Burley, UMass Boston
Automating knowledge production and teaching weakens the ecosystem of students and scholars that sustains universities, raising existential questions about their mission.
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