A.I. Is Fueling a ‘Poverty of Imagination.’ Here’s How We Can Fix It.

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0:31Jessica Grose:This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:47I'm Meher Ahmad, and I'm an editor for the New York Times Opinion section. Today I'm joined by my colleagues, writer Jessica Gross and columnist Tressie McMillan-Cottom, to talk about artificial intelligence and higher education. Hi to both of you.

1:01Jessica Grose:Hi, thanks so much for having me.

1:03Tressie McMillan Cottom:Hello, always a pleasure to be here. And hi, Jessica, good to see you. So both of you have given this a lot of thought. Tressie, you're in the classroom often as a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and have called generative AI mid-tech, which we'll get into. And Jess, you've spent time interviewing parents, students, and most recently educators across the humanities to write a series of pieces on AI and education for your newsletter. And it's the last few weeks of summer. Schools are gearing to start back up soon. So I've gathered us together because there's been much said about how critical thinking skills are atrophying under the consistent use of AI like ChatGPT or Gemini.

1:41So I want to talk with both of you about how we grapple with AI's role in higher education.

1:46Jessica Grose:If you're a broke college student and you need some extra money, let me show you how I make an extra$500 to$600 a week by using ChatGPT. I've got my theater history notes. I have highlighted chapter one. Look at that. It already created flashcards. Sometimes I even tell it like, sound like I'm 20 and I give it like all of my demographics. It's like over like 50 words. Like, yeah, I don't want to write that shit. So before we dive into our conversation today, I wanted to kind of just get a temperature check from both of you on how you feel about AI being used by students in higher education. on a scale of one to 10, with one being burn it down and 10 being extremely beneficial.

2:25How do you rank the use of AI in the classroom?

2:29Tressie McMillan Cottom:I should preface this by saying I do not pretend to be a universal sample on this. Having said that, I'm going to put it at a two. I was just thinking two to be generous.

2:41Jessica Grose:Yep. Most days I want to send my children to a monastery. Yes, that's about right. That's about it. So, you know, we're both, you might not hear a pro, a super pro AI point of view on this discussion, but I will try to present the other side as best I can and present some of the more positive use cases that I have heard through my reporting, because there are some. So, okay, so the temperature is not good. We're tepid at best. Well, Tressie, I wanted to start with you. You've been critical of AI's role in education. You know, as I said, you called it mid-tech, where it's being used for mundane tasks and, you know, what we actually need to be promoting an education expertise instead.

3:24So I was curious if you could explain that idea. Like, how does it factor into higher education for you?

3:31Tressie McMillan Cottom:Yeah, so artificial intelligence is an iteration of a wave of educational technology in education systems. And so I think it's important to think of it in that context because a lot of the sort of cultural power and the political power that AI has right now, which I would argue is outsized given how useful AI is or is not to actual educators and students. There's a lot of hype, right? And a lot of that hype is based on the premise that there's something really novel about it, right? And that if we don't jump on this new, novel, innovative, general-purpose technology that's going to transform society, education will be left behind.

4:10Tressie McMillan Cottom:So because of that, I think it is super important to have some historical context. And I've been writing and studying and researching educational technology in higher education for a long time, and people will just have to trust me on this. AI is not that novel. It is not that potentially revolutionary. It is in a long continuum of technologies that promise to transform education, starting with the TV, the typewriter, VCRs, tablets, if anybody remembers when we were going to give everybody a Chromebook, right? AI is in that continuum. Most of the promotion of AI in schools boils down to, well, it's happening, and so students need to know.

4:46Tressie McMillan Cottom:But there's nothing attaching it to learning outcomes. There's nothing assessing its risk to privacy, to data, to the mental and emotional and cognitive development of students. And that's actually what education is supposed to do. So because of that, my premise here about AI, not just in education, by the way, but when I say that AI is mid, one, it's an illusion, if I do say so myself, tried to be crafty there. But there's an allusion to the fact that AI quite literally is an averaging of the mid-level range of responses to a prompt. That's how it arrives at the things that it tells you. But also the idea that I don't think that it is nearly as transformative, especially to the social processes of things like education and learning, as it is predicted to be.

5:29Tressie McMillan Cottom:There are very few strong, universally positive use cases for AI in education right now. Mm-hmm. And Jess, how does Tressie's take on AI factor into what you're hearing from the many pieces that you've written about how it's being used in classrooms and by teachers and students?

5:45Jessica Grose:Yeah, I mean, it absolutely tracks. I think there's some nuance just only in the way that it's being used for different age groups. So I think it has zero place in K through six or seven. The fact that it is even in the differential of discussion for children that age is absurd to me because there's ample evidence that they do not learn how to read properly, just even with screens, read and comprehend properly. It's a different process. They really need paper, pen, the old-fashioned implements. So let's put that aside for now. Getting to the college level, I think there should be some training in different subject matter areas about how to use the technology if it is appropriate and if it is going to actually improve the research that is happening.

6:41Jessica Grose:So humanities, I really think there are very few cases of where its use is going to be helpful to the way that the students are thinking. But I could see, you know, in medical research, you know, you're seeing that the AI pattern recognition is really helping come up with novel fixes and novel medications to problems that have bedeviled researchers for a long time. But I think I fully agree with trustee about the humanities and that there are very limited use cases where it leads to deeper thinking, better research. I'm just not convinced by what I've seen. And the same, I've tried to use it. And basically what I'm told is, oh, you know, it'll help with your research.

7:24Jessica Grose:It will help summarize things. I don't know what's important to a piece of text for what I'm writing until I've read the entire piece of text. Like, why does what AI think is important going to be what I think is important to the argument that I'm trying to build? Which, again, writing and thinking is such a bespoke cognitive process that AI can't tell me what I think about something that I haven't read yet. I mean, it just saying it out loud sounds absurd, but it feels like we need to explain that at this point because it's being pushed as this cure all, think all human tool. I'm just not convinced of that.

8:03Just speaking of humanities, you wrote a piece in your newsletter about how humanities professors are dealing with students that are using AI in their classrooms. And it sounded like they're kind of coming into this with an understanding that the fact that it's being used by their students is a given. What did you learn when you spoke to these professors?

8:21Jessica Grose:So it was unexpectedly inspiring to hear about how so many humanities professors are remaking their classes to rely more on in-person activities and exams that create community within the classroom, but also involve the community outside the classroom. So one example is a professor at Beloit College, which is a small private liberal arts college in Wisconsin, told me about teaching the novel The Dispossessed, which is an Ursula Le Guin novel. And as part of the class, the students had to run discussions on the novel at libraries, public schools, senior centers. And she told me a crucial part of the class involves students practicing and role playing before our outreach events.

9:05Jessica Grose:And then later they'd reflect upon what they learned from their experiences, what they do differently, and how they describe their new skill sets to potential employers. And she didn't outright ban the use of AI in her class, which I thought was also really interesting. She had the students discuss among themselves what they thought would be appropriate and come up with a code of conduct that they all agreed to stick to. Because one thing that I heard from a lot of professors is they don't want to be cops. They don't want to spend their time policing adults' use of this technology. So there needs to be sort of this transparent discussion around appropriate and inappropriate uses because just banning it outright doesn't work anymore.

9:49And Tressie, as a professor, are there ways in which you've used AI in the classroom or in educational spaces?

9:56Tressie McMillan Cottom:I am a critical social scientist. So what that means is I get to critique for a living. And so we use it for the purpose. Most often in my classroom anyway, we have used AI for the purpose of understanding it as what we call a socio-technical system, meaning how are you going to use it and what are the risks of using it? what are some of the latent assumptions in the technology that may reinforce existing inequalities or produce new inequalities. So one of my favorite assignments, which I've actually done for several years, is a sort of hunt and find mission. And I tell them at the beginning of the semester that I would like them to figure out what their data rights are as a university student.

10:42Tressie McMillan Cottom:I want them to document the process of how they found out what their data rights are. And then I want them to document what technologies they are expected to use in the everyday routine completion of their educational work, their educational assignments. And so we spend all semester trying to figure out how does something like AI use the data that students put into it? Every time you upload a paper for AI to rewrite, every time you prompt with details of an assignment, that goes in to someone's machine. And so one of the assignments we do all semester long is a conversation about the ethical and legal trade-offs of convenience vis-a-vis what we give up in privacy.

11:26Tressie McMillan Cottom:And one of the things that I love about this assignment is that I'm the professor, so I'm cheating, right? I created it. I know that it's almost impossible for them to answer it, but it is important for them to learn the lack of transparency in every layer of technology that is introduced introduced into an organization, into a school system. Every time we layer another technology on, it gets harder and harder for the student to understand what they are responsible for and what rights they are giving up. And I would say that of all the ed tech innovations that we have unveiled over the last 10, 15 years in teaching and higher education, in my experience, AI is the most opaque and therefore to me is one of the most troubling as far as, you know, know, shifting risk and responsibility on to vulnerable students, making it difficult for them to find a solution when AI is wrong, something we almost never talk about, who's responsible when AI is wrong, and what responsibility we have to putting something into the system that has a vast amount of, like, complicated outcomes for the environment, for inequality, and why institutions would push us into doing that.

12:33Tressie McMillan Cottom:So I use it, but mostly in service of critiquing it. And how have you seen the reaction from your students? Because I imagine for younger generations, like adopting this technology without giving it much thought can be enticing, especially if their peers are using it consistently. So how's that been? It's not only enticing, there are a lot of incentives for them to use it. I mean, one of the things that happens when technology becomes the epicenter of the culture is that it is cool. And there's so much anxiety right now around whether or not you chose the right major, whether you're going to graduate on time, whether you're going to get the good job, that being a part of the vanguard of technology just seems like a no-brainer for most students.

13:16Tressie McMillan Cottom:And by now, many of them are coming to college having been immersed in that anxiety in K-12. Well, one of the saddest stories for me as an educator is about four years ago, all of my incoming students started reporting that they've had a LinkedIn account since they were in middle school. I was horrified. I was horrified. And they didn't understand why I was horrified. So we had this whole story about, you know, we had this whole conversation about, well, what does that mean? How you've been managing your professional profile since you were 13. Like, what have we done to you? But that's how they're kind of showing up in higher education and how they understand technology.

13:53Tressie McMillan Cottom:So for many of them, my class might be the first opportunity they've ever had where they have been invited to think about the technology, not just use it, not just adopt it, not just become really good at it so that they don't fall behind, you know, but to actually think about it. So it opens up all these wonderful questions that I hope gives them a lens to consider not just AI after they leave my classroom, but whatever comes after AI. Because there'll always be a new wave of technology that promises a shinier future while hiding the risk and the tradeoffs. So they tend to be very enthusiastic about it and terrified, I might say.

14:31Tressie McMillan Cottom:Very scared. It's interesting that like a lot of people are concerned about AI deadening critical thinking skills, but it sounds like by taking their critical thinking skills and applying it towards AI directly that you've kind of figured out this loophole in the system to get people to engage with this topic without necessarily feeling like they need to use it to outsource their thinking because they're talking about the AI itself. I got to say, what Jess described in the professors that responded to her about how they're using AI is very consistent for me of having watched especially humanities and social science professors over the last 15 years adopt to the rapidly changing technological environment in education.

15:12Tressie McMillan Cottom:It is always stunning to me when I read an article or a piece of research or listen to a politician describe academics and professors as being luddites, being resistant to technology, because what Jessica describes is actually very typical for my professional field. things like the digital humanities is the humanities responding to the fact that technology is inevitable and that there is always going to be a place for humanistic inquiry and learning. And I think that's what Jessica is seeing in people's responses.

15:45Jessica Grose:Absolutely, especially in the sort of post-COVID moment where the students who are now college students lost out on really important years of socialization. and they see those as skills to be built back up. And so critical thinking is certainly part of it and writing skills are certainly part of it. But public speaking, interacting with community, and I keep coming back to the interacting with the community because something that I find so depressing is the loss of trust in higher education that has happened over the past several decades. And there's been obviously a concerted effort by the right wing to put down higher education and sow doubt about its utility.

16:28Jessica Grose:And so I think having students be more directly involved with the communities around the schools can only be positive both for the students themselves, but also the surrounding community and the feelings of trust in higher education writ large. So one question I did have about just the degree to which this technology is novel or different from other kind of tech that's existed prior to this, SparkNotes has always been a thing. Students have always tried to find shortcuts to summarize dense books. Is this markedly different when it does that? Maybe, Tressie, if you want to talk to that first.

17:05Tressie McMillan Cottom:Yeah, Jessica points to something that is just fundamental in the scientific research of the very messy process of how we learn. And that is learning is fundamentally a social process. It It is what we would call relational. It happens within the context of relationships. So when you would read the Sparknotes for the Canterbury Tales, which was admittedly maybe my introduction to Sparknotes many, many, many, many years ago, one of the things that happened there is that one, you had to actually go physically buy. It was a physical piece of media. There was a culture there that said to you the same thing that the physical media said to you.

17:44Tressie McMillan Cottom:This is not a relationship. This is not a person telling me this. We know for a fact that we tend to trust information or more likely to trust especially novel information when it feels like we get that information in a relationship. That's why when you just kind of go to the library to answer a question when all else fails you, what do you do? You go to the librarian, right? Because what we want is a human being to help us make sense of what we don't know. With SparkNotes, that's not a risk, right? You know that the book is not interactive. You know that it is not intended to be something that you necessarily trust like you would a teacher or a librarian.

18:24Tressie McMillan Cottom:I think the risk of AI is that it shrouds what is fundamentally just summaries, right, of commonly held interpretations of the text, but it delivers it in a way that feels relational. So that's why when you see these horror stories, which admittedly right now are still extreme use cases, but these horror stories of people who think that they have fallen in love with their AI or they reanimate a dead loved one as an AI. The risk of that is that your brain actually doesn't do a great job of parsing when the computer voice is a computer versus when it is a human voice. I think that is just a fundamentally different vehicle for delivering information that AI hasn't earned.

19:10Tressie McMillan Cottom:AI doesn't deserve the trust that we give human beings when it comes to information that it gives us. And in fact, it can't earn that trust because it's not human. So that to me is the risk. I mean, it's interesting with the SparkNotes example because ultimately humans are involved in writing the SparkNotes as well. And Jess, you wrote this in one of your pieces that there was a teacher that set an example where students were meant to research prophets. And the AI told one of the students that Moses got chocolate stains out of a T-shirt, maybe instead of like Moses getting water out of a rock.

19:44And because they're young, they don't know to question that because they maybe don't know that Moses got water out of a rock instead of chocolate out of a T-shirt. What was that story there? And what do you make of that?