The article explores how college students are using Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)AI for academic work and the resulting crisis and shift in higher education.
Student A.I. Use and Perspectives
Heavy Use: Students view A.I. as a productivity tool, comparable to Google or Grammarly. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that a quarter of teens (ages 13-17) use ChatGPT for schoolwork, double the figure from 2023.
Alex (NYU): Uses multiple A.I.s (Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, ChatGPT) for “Any type of writing in life,” including generating a paper for an art-history class that received an A-minus. He admits this is cheating but views A.I. as an indispensable confidant for personal issues, dating, and even drafting his NYU application.
Eugene (NYU): Uses A.I. for business class computations, not writing, but considers his friend’s academic dishonesty a “victimless crime”—”It’s cheating, but I don’t think it’s, like, cheating.”
Impact on Time/Quality:
May (Georgetown) became a “less patient writer” but uses the saved time to “sleep more” and focus on courses she’s passionate about.
Alex estimated he spent 30 minutes to an hour on two final papers that might have taken eight or nine hours without A.I., noting, “I didn’t retain anything.”
Academic Pressure: Students now spend about 15 hours/week on schoolwork, down from an estimated 24 hours/week in the early 1960s. This search for efficiency is seen as an intervention in how they choose to spend their time.
The Academic Response and Pedagogical Shifts
Panic and Resignation: After the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, educators initially panicked. Now, academic administrations have largely adopted an “attitude of hopeful resignation” and are encouraged to find practical, pedagogical applications. OpenAI has released ChatGPT Edu for educational use.
Return to Basics: To combat A.I. use, many professors have returned to traditional methods:
In-class blue-book exams (pen and paper).
Passage-identification exams to ensure students know the text.
Considering oral exams (“back to 450 B.C.”).
Focus on Process: Other educators are overhauling assignments to focus on an iterative process (drafting, peer feedback, revision, using A.I. as a tool), arguing that generic assignments without process “creat[e] an environment tailored to crime.”
Detection: A.I.-detection services analyze syntax, but they are unreliable; testing Alex’s paper yielded results between 28% and 61% likelihood of being A.I.-generated.
Broader Societal and Intellectual Concerns
Intellectual Decline: A study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that human intellect has declined since 2012, with an over-all drop in test scores for math and reading comprehension across nearly 30 countries.
Writing’s Value: The way we write shapes our thinking, and the ability to compose original sentences is considered critical, especially as A.I. gives everyone access to the same generic assistance.
Job Automation: A labor report noted that computer-science majors had a higher unemployment rate than ethnic-studies majors, which some believe is due to A.I. automating entry-level coding jobs, underscoring the uncertainty of job markets.
Conclusion: The author ultimately assigns less blame to students, who are simply “early adopters” trying to outwit a system that has made it easy. Education, particularly in the humanities, rests on the value of wrestling with risk, doubt, and failure, which A.I. allows students to bypass altogether.
Gemini can make mistakes, so double-check it
