I started teaching at a masters program this year and it saddened me anytime I suspected a student of writing with AI.
Not because they shouldn't use AI to help them... but because my assigned task was often a personal reflection:
- what they were learning about entrepreneurship that moment,
- how they think of themselves as a founder,
- why they see the world the way they do.
I was asking them to figure out who they are as entrepreneurs, as impact makers, as young people. And often, I got back generic musings with no personality, no deeper revelation, no inner conflict. And in my 20 years of work, I've never met a good creative who didn't have some level of inner conflict or insight. And while AI can help us check the box, mimicking the work, it will not do the INNER work for us.
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Yet, it's also too easy to label these AI-enhanced students as cheaters, to hate them, to punish and eject them from the system. That's the quick reaction.
I find it hard to despise them because I was once them... I too have "cheated" in the past... not with AI, but the tools of my day.
Back then, I felt university wasn't for me... the strict rules, large lecture halls, sitting still for hours, listening passively, theoretical frameworks that felt disconnected from reality, emphasis on memorization and marks, depersonalized relationships with the institution. I felt stupid! Why couldn't I perform in the way that so many of my peers did seemingly so easily?
Eventually, I realized that learning and the education system were two different things. I didn't take the path of continued education, pursuing the next certificate... but instead, I pursued my curiosities.
I applied my ideas, experimented, created projects... and saw which ones worked, which ones didn't and reflected why... over and over again. Thankfully, this was also a time when podcasts and youtube was emerging, so there was no lack of theories. I found groups, peers, and experts to discuss these ideas - both challenging and supporting each other. Whatever my curiosity was, I used this same method and it often worked.
Of course, it was very slow and often confusing, but I felt more connected to the topics. I learned how to learn... I wanted to learn. I think this idea was mirrored in one great point of many in this brilliant video: "AI has returned us to the question of what the point of higher education is." And maybe more broadly, what is learning? What's the value of it? And if it does have value, how does one achieve it?
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Now 20 years later, I've somehow found myself on the other side of the classroom and I don't want to punish or despise anyone. It truly saddens me to even suspect a student. I want to believe they're doing the work. I want to believe they're really thinking critically. I want to believe they were learning. Because why else are they there?
My only hope is to make the course active and engaging enough that we talk openly... about AI, about entrepreneurship, about what they’re actually learning. Because my real goal is for them to discover a spark for self-learning, both learning by themselves and learning about themselves. Because that’s the part that lasts long after my four months with them are over.
And I want to emphasize: there is hope. Many students didn’t use AI. Many wrote with vulnerability, with confusion, with honesty. And at the end of the semester, those same students were the ones who changed the most.
Seeing that makes me excited to meet the next batch, next semester. Because when one genuinely reflects, however messily, that’s when the real learning begins. And who knows where that will lead them?
Reflection inspired by this YouTube video by Columbia Journalism School, "What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?"