‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI

Illustration: Jon Han/The GuardianView image in fullscreen Illustration: Jon Han/The Guardian‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AIAs AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities – and society at large Lea Pao, a professor of literature at Stanford University, has been experimenting with ways to get her students to learn offline. She has them memorize poems, perform at recitation events, look at art in the real world.It’s an effort to reconnect them to the bodily experience of learning, she said, and to keep them from turning to artificial intelligence to do the work for them. “There’s no AI-proof anything,” Pao said. “Rather than policing it, I hope that their overall experiences in this class will show them that there’s a way out.”It doesn’t always work. Recently, she asked students to visit a local museum, look at a painting for 10 minutes, and then write a few paragraphs describing the experience. It was a purposefully personal assignment, yet one student responded with a sophisticated but drab reflection – “too perfect, without saying anything”, Pao said. She later learned the student had tried to visit the museum on a Monday, when it was closed, and then turned to AI.Schools are using AI counselors to track students’ mental health. Is it safe?Read moreAs artificial intelligence has upended the way in which students read, learn and write, professors like Pao ...