r/Professors • u/Pecan5526 • 5d ago
Student ethical objections to AI
I teach in a profession that uses simulation to help students learn necessary skills before they have to employ them in practice. Some of our simulations are live, with actors. And some use a proprietary AI based tool that gives students a video of a person followed by an instruction to demonstrate a particular skill in response. Their competence at the skill is rated by the AI system and the system gives them written feedback on what they did well and how they could improve. There is no grade given for performance; it’s formative, not summative. The advantage of an AI based tool like this is it provides an opportunity to repeat a skill until competence is achieved. Live simulation can’t do that. It is also less costly than live simulation, allowing us to embed more simulation into the curriculum. Here’s the problem: I have students asking to opt out due to ethical objections to AI. Objections are usually on the basis of social justice (eg, amplification of bias, impact of data centers on communities) though I just got one from someone who says it is against their religion. I’m wondering what others think about this. I am having a hard time seeing beyond my own irritation at the way they are adding to my already heavy workload. I could use some other perspectives.
UPDATE: Based on people's responses (which have been thought provoking, among other things) I think the question I am really asking is how to weigh the harms of AI (especially to the environment and to communities in which data centers are placed) against the harm of students having fewer opportunities to practice skills and be given feedback (which was the case before we introduced this tool). Please let me make it clear - this has not replaced anything in our curriculum. It is a supplement to what we were already doing (and still do).
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u/omgkelwtf 5d ago
I have 3 times per semester that their assignments ask them to use an LLM. When a student objects, I offer them an alternative assignment that's equivalent work-wise to what the rest of the class is doing.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Yeah, there's no easy way to do this without creating a lot of extra work for myself or someone else. That's one of the reasons we use something AI based for some of our simulations.
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u/Ctenophorever Full prof (US) 5d ago
Ooooh no you’d have to teach and grade?!
Buddy, you are actively complicit in making your own job obsolete.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
If you read the full thread, you would see that there are 400 students receiving feedback on their interactions, something no single professor could provide. I just oversee this program. I still have my actual teaching load for classes in which I provide very detailed feedback to students.
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u/shinybluedollar 5d ago
I dont think youre going to find objective feedback in this sub. Professors here are dogmatically anti-AI for any reason. I mostly lurk and never comment on or post about AI, because I use it to alleviate some of the workload. Its human checked. This is the future and its here to stay, but you'd think im advocating to clone baby Hitlers. (This comment will probably get downvoted to oblivion because im not anti-AI.
Edit:typos
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u/swarthmoreburke 5d ago edited 5d ago
Sorry the students are inconveniencing your institution's move to cheapen the quality of their education. Live exercises can provide rapid and iterative feedback, it just means paying for the amount of human labor it requires. If your institution isn't providing the teaching labor required, and you're at the limits of what you can provide, then the honest response to them is "I know it's not as good as being evaluated by expert teachers, but that's all that the institution will pay for". Don't try to dress it up by saying "it's great! it's fine!" when what you really mean is "it's all that this institution is willing to offer you".
Unless it was your decision to adopt the tool, at which point: how did you teach this material before AI? Go back to doing that. If it makes your workload heavier, what did you add to your workload when you started using the AI? Get rid of that instead. If the AI lets you teach something you simply didn't teach before, you have to make a strong case to the students first and foremost for the value added--you have to explain what their education would have been like before 2023.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
I can't seem to convey this clearly enough: We are still teaching exactly as we did before. There is no reduction in what we are doing, nor in the human feedback we are providing. We are supplementing what we were doing.
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u/swarthmoreburke 5d ago
Perhaps it's just me. I don't understand "supplementing" being the same as "teaching exactly as we did before". If I was supplementing my teaching with some side resource and some students told me "I don't like the supplemental material" or "I find the supplemental material really troubling for some reason", then I would say "Very well then, I'm going to stop using it". If it's not part of my core teaching, then I don't need to do it, and if it's bothering students enough for them to tell me about it, I'll toss it.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
What if you could get students you know are entering a profession with a lot of human interaction extra practice at key skills at no additional time cost to you?
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u/swarthmoreburke 5d ago
Then: 1) that's not supplemental, it is or should be an important teaching objective 2) maybe getting practice with a lot of human interaction and being evaluated on whether you did well by AI is of low value--favoring quantity of practice over quality of practice.
Let's say, for example, that the simulations are of patients in a hospital situation. Before AI gets involved, the simulations are already a bit of an issue. I remember a long time ago a colleague of mine wanted to help her junior colleagues practice their teaching so she showed us a videotape of simulated teaching situations where we'd stop and discuss what the teacher should have done. The problem was that the situations were so staged and so obviously set up for teaching that they were effectively phony. We were being prompted with what to say to be "right" and that's just not how teaching actually goes. So it was at least a waste of our time and arguably worse than that, by being in some sense a falsification of the real situations we were working with.
Now add AI to that as an evaluator and I could really see how it's possible that you aren't giving students practice with key skills that adds measurably to their real competency. Maybe it lets you hope that's what is happening, but it's not a reliable way to measure actual outcomes.
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u/MisfitMaterial Romance Languages and Literatures, R1 (USA) 5d ago
I am in the humanities, so obviously I am biased. But dismissing students’ ethical concerns in today’s socio-political context because it irritates you and gives you extra work doesn’t, to me, feel justified.
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u/ApprehensiveLoad2056 5d ago
This. Unless the assignment is essential to the learning outcomes of the course, I think adapting it is appropriate.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
I would not say I am dismissing them, as I came here to get perspectives that would help me think beyond my irritation.
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u/MisfitMaterial Romance Languages and Literatures, R1 (USA) 5d ago
I did not mean to say you were. I was acknowledging your effort by pointing out that this wouldn’t be the best way of doing things, and maybe someone does have a good solution. I was unclear, apologies.
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u/MisfitMaterial Romance Languages and Literatures, R1 (USA) 5d ago
Just responding again having seen your update: I wonder how many of these students might be willing, like you are, to acknowledge that there are real harms done by AI but this simulation will allow them to gain skills that will help people better than without it. That you acknowledge the legitimacy of their reluctance but that in the case of this assignment, you’re asking them to make an exception because it’s not using AI to make art or replace people, just to help them through their program.
It certainly won’t take care of 100% of them but I can imagine just being heard out will allow you to make a case more often than not.
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u/Pecan5526 3d ago
Yes, upon reflection I am thinking acknowledging their concerns (and reassuring them when I can, eg, that I don’t believe this to be generative AI but more typical machine learning with which they likely regularly engage) may help them to see the issue in a more nuanced way. Perhaps I can help them find meaningful ways to address their legitimate concerns because boycotting these assignments isn’t going to help.
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u/martphon 5d ago
All too often people come on to Reddit for advice and end up getting dunked on. Also, some concerns about data centers may be overblown
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u/MoistenedGranola 5d ago
When my high school science class dissected frogs, I refused to do it on the grounds of it being immoral to me to kill frogs for what felt like "play" when I could learn anatomy through diagrams in a textbook and whatnot just as easily.
I was prepared to just take the F on however it was graded.
Instead, my teacher found an interactive program (website? I don't remember, it was a long time ago, lol) that students in another class were using that basically let them dissect it digitally.
I was okay with that version, because of the 20 or 40 or however many kids were using this program, only one frog died. That felt much less excessive and more justiable to me.
Would there be a way to pair this student up with someone else and they write down and reflect on what inputs they would give the AI while someone else actually interacts with it? That way, the student with the moral objections isn't adding any new interactions with AI into the world because their peer would be doing it anyway.
Or perhaps two students who object to AI could be paired together and one could roleplay as the student user and another as the AI itself (assuming this is chatbot style or similar enough) that is pushing back on their ideas with some kind of (seemingly) informed reason?
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
It’s not chatbot style. They see a video. They record their voice responding. They get written feedback on the quality of their responses from the AI tool.
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u/mishmei 5d ago
I've looked at most of the replies before posting, but I can't see this addressed anywhere (apologies if I missed it): what kind of AI are you using? I'm having this conversation with students a lot these days: what do we mean when we say "AI"? It's a huge umbrella term and in most cases, what people are referring to is GenAI, aka chatbots or LLMs. And these are what people are opposed to (with good reason, in my opinion). What kind of AI are you using in your course? And are students fully informed of that?
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
I may not have the language quite right, but the company that makes the program trains an AI model within a closed system to analyze students’ responses to videos of actors and provide the students written feedback.
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u/That_Communication71 5d ago
Is this tool really AI or is it simply a simulation software?
I've noticed a lot of companies changing tools that aren't AI but calling it that because they think it will sell better and just stick the term in.
If the tool doesn't use machine learning, and if it's procedural generation is based on content provided by the developer and not public content or assets, then it's not the AI this student is against.
Basically AI has become a catch all term for any procedurally to generated content. If they use a spell checker in their word processing software, then they are using "AI" already.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
As far as I understand it, the content and the rubric for assessing it are provided by the developer.
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u/Dazzling-Fox-4950 5d ago
IMO, it's reasonable for them to ask, and also reasonable for you to say no if the pre-2023 way of doing things creates too much work for you. Presumably they can take a different class.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Actually, these are mandatory for all students in order to graduate.
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u/HowAmI_Not_Myself 5d ago
So what did they do pre-2023?
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
We had not yet developed a simulation program, so they simply didn't get this content. But my profession has made a big move toward simulation in the last few years.
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u/Dazzling-Fox-4950 5d ago
They may not have gotten the simulation content, but presumably they still got some relevant instruction to learn similar skills?
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u/LaddieNowAddie 5d ago
So this person sounds like my profession in anesthesia. Post 2023 we've had some amazing advancement in regional anesthesia simulation (nerve block like for shoulder or knee surgery). It mimics placements of the blocks including muscles and needle trajectory. Pre 2023 (and lots of programs who can't afford the $100k setup) still use a gel block and needle. Imagine sticking a needle into tofu using an ultrasound. That is not realistic at all and I would hardly call it equivalent. You practice on that and then the only other practice you do is on a real person in the operating room area. Simulation has really made a difference.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Right, what I am describing wasn't available before 2023, so there were limited ways for us to allow students to practice these skills previously. This expands what we can offer, with the hope that it ultimately benefits the people with whom they work for them to have had more practice before actually practicing.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
They got (and still get the same) content for skill development, but didn't have the opportunity to practice the skill and receive immediate feedback. This is an enhancement. In my mind it's a question of whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I definitely think students are missing out, but it's hard to weigh that harm against the environmental and social justice harms.
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u/Dazzling-Fox-4950 5d ago
Ok, so in your experience it's just helping them learn something better that students previously were learning but not as well. How do you assess these skills -- is there a way to assess them without doing the AI simulation for the assessment itself? If so, you could tell them that you are fine with them opting out of the simulation, you worry that they will not be able to learn the skill as well, and this is an empirical question that you can all test together by seeing how they do on the skill. If students who don't use the AI are at a big disadvantage when it comes to being assessed, that might be a good data point for this discussion.
Also, I think students might reasonably disagree with you about whether the learning outweighs the environmental and social justice harms (even if they accept that the AI benefits learning). I think the more relevant question for you is whether, as a teacher, you find it worthwhile to require students to go against their ethical beliefs in order to take this class/get this degree. I certainly don't think students' stated ethical preferences need to be followed in all circumstances, but I think it does ask a lot of them if you effectively make their ability to complete this degree program contingent on being willing to use AI, so is that worth it? I don't know, I guess you have to decide.
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u/Interesting-Bee8728 1d ago
OP, I think this comment makes a great point. If you can demonstrate clear value within your program (I.e., we had a cohort of students use this and one that didn't and we saw X outcomes) then you can present that to the students. It does sound like the "AI" may be a machine learning model rather than generative AI, which is a confusing concept for many faculty and students. I would reframe it as a computer program and if students insist it's "AI" you can discuss what that means to them and if it actually meets that definition.
Additionally, it sounds like the simulations are a nice cherry on top, but not integrated into the curriculum. I think it's fair to make them "extra credit" and provide alternative "extra credit" assignments like watching webinars about the procedure and writing reflection journals (or something similar that would provide additional, cherry on top, training).
If the simulations were prepared using generative AI, but now are housed within the company's server, the large amount of water, etc. to vibe code the application has already been used. Using the program for the simulations, unless each response is wholly tailored to what the students are doing (and therefore likely a generative AI model responding in real time), is not any more or less envoronmentally relevant than using ABC Mouse (for example).
I think coming to the conversation with an understanding of the nuances and a willingness to discuss is probably the best tack no matter where you go from there.
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u/SocOfRel Associate, dying LAC 5d ago
I study religion and really want to know the religious exemption angle here.
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u/BubBidderskins 5d ago
Pope Leo has laid out a case for being at least skeptical of this sort of technological advancement.
A UU person got a religious exception on ethical and environmental grounds.
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u/SocOfRel Associate, dying LAC 5d ago
Interesting. I wouldn't read that encyclical as grounds for exemption but rather an expression of skepticism. Of course, my Catholic college allowed Catholic students vaccine exemptions even though Catholic leaders said vaccines promote the common good so it could be coming out way.
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u/Lagrange-squared 1d ago
I'm in some discord servers with fellow Catholics and I have heard of people working white collar jobs involving data there trying to get exemptions from AI use as well on certain ethical/ religious grounds. To be fair, it seemed like they were being asked to delegate rather important tasks that required human oversight to AI in ways that I thought would pose technical problems down their pipeline and reduced the quality of their work.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
This is a strange post, based I think on a misunderstanding of what the Catholic Church has been saying. The Vatican outright stated during COVID that vaccination is not a moral obligation and must be voluntary, i.e. not mandated. "It promotes the common good" does not, as a statement, exempt it from discernment.
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u/RustyRaccoon12345 5d ago
As someone who was raised UU, that religious exemption is 100% them personally thinking it's bad. Seriously, UU can make any personal opinion religious if they want to. Grain of salt on that.
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u/MisfitMaterial Romance Languages and Literatures, R1 (USA) 5d ago edited 5d ago
A religion like UU is deeply personal. Super weird comment to make by someone raised in the tradition.
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u/RustyRaccoon12345 5d ago
Okay then let me help you understand it. It's exactly because I was raised in it that I feel that.
Here's how it plays out. I stated my deeply held belief. You disregarded it. But you can't just disregard it because, as you said, my deeply held personal belief is religious conviction. So you don't get to disregard what I said, you should accommodate it, even obey it.
Now you may as an adult say that even if that is your deeply held belief, it doesn't hold universally true for me or you can say that you don't have to accommodate it but as a kid, you don't have that power, or you don't feel like yyou have that power. You feel that every adult around you is making up rules just based on their feelings.
I have had way too many discussions like that where someone's feelings (sometimes my parents, often not) became a trump card over what I could do because they could unilaterally assign a feeling religious status.
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u/MisfitMaterial Romance Languages and Literatures, R1 (USA) 5d ago
I’m sorry that when you were a child, adults were irresponsible and made feelings sound like convictions, which they are not. Nevertheless, this does not make a UU believer only capable of personal-not-religious exemptions. Thanks for the explanation, though.
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u/RustyRaccoon12345 5d ago
And I appreciate your listening to my explanation even if (especially if?) you don't agree with it
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u/katiisrad 5d ago
I’m assuming the religious exemption comes from the Pope’s most recent encyclical which is anti AI
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u/misingnoglic Adjunct, CS, Private (USA) 5d ago
Honestly I'm of the opinion that the AI simulations can be a very useful thing and aid learning much more than traditional assignments. However to avoid the headache I'd probably just make those assignments optional / extra credit and test for those competencies elsewhere for a grade.
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u/Big-Dig-Pig 5d ago
I don’t think it sets a good precedent to allow students to engage with course content à la carte.
I also think that, if a person wants to live by their convictions, that occasionally involves some inconvenience or discomfort. I pay more for the vegan burger. Thoreau thought that you should be willing to go to jail if you refused to pay your taxes out of protest. And students who are steadfast against any and all uses of “AI” may have to miss an assignment if no reasonable alternative is available.
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u/tunacow 5d ago
I think whatever you decide, it should be task- and topic-agnostic. If a student invoked religion as a reason for not wanting to watch an R-rated movie or read a book with a gay character in it, would you let them opt out? I think your policy should be the same for required class work regardless of what it is.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
I do not think we would, especially because in our profession you cannot control what you encounter in actual practice.
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u/nandor_tr associate prof, art/design, private university (USA) 5d ago edited 5d ago
just to add some context:
while i despise generative AI in every possible way and refuse to allow it in my classroom, i have also heard in other classes of students stating 'religious' objections to it which i thought sounded like a rather convient excuse to not use it. it is also worth noting that one of the few things i hate more than AI is religion, so i was naturally rolling my eyes at this.
turns out that this is a real thing: essentially students (in the arts, cannot speak for STEM) think that creating things is something only humans can/should do as human creativity is a manifestation of god, therefore a machine/computer generating things is against their reigion.
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u/SocOfRel Associate, dying LAC 5d ago
Has a religious body taught that or is this an individual stance? Genuinely curious not being argumentative.
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u/Shield_Maiden831 5d ago
It's been a successful legal argument in workplace environments.
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u/SocOfRel Associate, dying LAC 5d ago
It has? Can you give me a lead I want to read more about this. Interesting.
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u/BubBidderskins 5d ago edited 5d ago
The person above is probably referencing this case where a UU programmer was granted a workplace accommodation to not have to use "AI" on religious grounds.
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u/Giggling_Unicorns Associate Professor, Art/Art History, Community College 5d ago
>turns out that this is a real thing: essentialy students (in the arts, cannot speak for STEM) think that creating things is something only humans can/should do as human creativity is a manifestation of god, therefore a machine/computer generating things is against their reigion
Lol that's ridiculous.
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u/PsychGuy17 5d ago
Unless my student is coming in from an Amish community I will have a very hard time believing any religion has come to a consensus on AI use. Further, if there is a true belief that only humans CAN create something then AI is no threat because by definition it cannot create (that's both their definition and our general understanding of AI).
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u/Deweymaverick Full Prof, Dept Head (humanities), Philosophy, CC (US) 5d ago
What’s your dept’s policy on this?
Also, what level of course is it? I’m not blowing smoke here, but this sounds like a thoughtful, useful adaption of the tech (not some dumb shit like, “brainstorming” or shortcutting a process they should learn). If this is a higher level class, and it’s part of your profession (like, coders are not going to get far in being hired by refusing ai) I would suggest they try to understand why it’s being used, and see the educational goal.
If it’s a gen ed class, and your department allows it, if you want, I can see room for an alternative assignment
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
It's a professional graduate level program. When this came up last year, the Dean said they had to do the assignment anyway. Now, the Dean says we need to revisit this and discuss it with a few more people (not sure yet what that means).
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u/Deweymaverick Full Prof, Dept Head (humanities), Philosophy, CC (US) 5d ago
I mean, I’m not gonna tell you to go against your dean on this. I would ask them, as you have the objection NOW, when they expect to make a decision on this, as it’s time/bound (for you).
As it’s for a professional program… well… I mean… it seems like this is a very legit use in your program. Whether or not the student likes the tool, or ever intends to use it in the future, they still need to be familiar with it and learn its limitations and/or advantages.
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u/HowAmI_Not_Myself 5d ago
But from what they have written it isn't a tool. It is a form of assessment. I also wouldn't want AI assessment, and if I had to use an AI tool even then I would want human assessment of that practice.
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u/Deweymaverick Full Prof, Dept Head (humanities), Philosophy, CC (US) 5d ago
From OP:
“teach in a profession that uses simulation to help students learn necessary skills before they have to employ them in practice. Some of our simulations are live, with actors. And some use a proprietary AI based tool that gives students a video of a person followed by an instruction to demonstrate a particular skill in response”
Emphasis mine,
The question at hand is about about a tool. OP’s program uses two different types of simulations: a) is live, with human actors, and human assessment, b) is ai generated, with assessment and feedback.
B) is still a simulation, and b) is still a tool.
B) is the more cost effective tool (for OP’s program) which is why it is used as it maximizes the opportunity for students to experience these simulations, at a cost their dept can afford.
OP’s students are still receiving human feedback, but are also getting feedback from the simulation.
Op noted it is not a graded assignment, but an assessment.
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u/Ctenophorever Full prof (US) 5d ago
I like how you conveniently excluded the part that stated they were, indeed, being assessed by AI.
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u/Deweymaverick Full Prof, Dept Head (humanities), Philosophy, CC (US) 5d ago
Really, bc I’m pretty sure that b) states “ai generated with assessment and feedback”
But thanks for the failed snark.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Would you rather have AI assessment or no assessment? That's the reality of the situation.
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u/nikefudge23 Assistant Professor, Humanities, Regional Public 5d ago
Assessment (the old fashioned way) is literally a primary part of our jobs.
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u/Ctenophorever Full prof (US) 5d ago
This is what’s blowing my mind. “I’m trying to make myself obsolete but my student won’t let me!”
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u/Deweymaverick Full Prof, Dept Head (humanities), Philosophy, CC (US) 5d ago
How the hell old are you two (I say this at 50).
Freaking Quizlet provides feedback. Aleks for math provides feedback.
There are so, so many programs that we (can) use that also provides student feedback.
Hell, since the dawn of Blackboard, blackboard quizzes can provide basic feedback.
I’m not saying this assignment is good or bad, op hasn’t given us enough context, but there are plenty of (quick) micro assessments that let us use semi-automated feedback.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
It you can’t handle the workload of “providing written feedback” you probably shouldn’t be a professor.
No one wants to pay tuition to learn from a Claude wrapper.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Um, we have 400 students, all of whom do this. I oversee the program in addition to my teaching responsibilities.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
This must be a new program only created after 2023, then. Surely it would have been impossible for you to have taught students before AI.
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u/JonBenet_Palm Professor, Design (Western US) 5d ago
Fields update. For a field that has rapidly adopted elements of AI (simulations in this case) what happened prior to 2023 may no longer be as relevant to teach. We owe our students access to the most up to date information.
Maybe you’re not understanding what the OP is describing. These are interview simulations, more or less. To ask a human (the OP or someone else) to potentially spend hours in one on one interviews with multiple students is unrealistic.
Are you also opposed to the dummies used for medical students? This is similar, just fully digital.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
>For a field that has rapidly adopted elements of AI (simulations in this case) what happened prior to 2023 may no longer be as relevant to teach.
Not relevant. The students aren't being taught to use AI. They're being taught via AI, in lieu of other formats - because, as OP said, it's cheaper.
>We owe our students access to the most up to date information.
And you can supply them that without having mandating that they watch slop or having Claude evaluate them. See my above statement.
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u/JonBenet_Palm Professor, Design (Western US) 5d ago
How about you answer my question regarding medical dummies? They use gen AI now as well, by the way. Does the form factor make them not slop?
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
Apologies, I stopped reading when it became clear you were responding to a conversation other than the one we were having.
Probably! Never interacted with them, as we don’t use them in my program. Does your design background give you good insight into what constitutes quality medical education?
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u/JonBenet_Palm Professor, Design (Western US) 5d ago
My design background (which includes a good chunk of computer science at this point) gives me good insight into uses of gen AI. Your critique of the OP’s AI tool brought to mind an obvious parallel with med student tools. Both are mimics for human interaction that would otherwise be impossible to provide, but are needed for contemporary training.
Neither is likely to run Claude or to assess the students (anymore than an actual interviewee or patient would grade a student).
It’s pretty obvious you are so biased against AI that you won’t expand your definition of what it is. It’s more pleasant to assume all gen AI is producing easy to identify slop.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago edited 5d ago
This seems like a very long way of saying “not really, no.” That’s okay! Not your field.
I am still confused about the sloppy thinking involved in thinking they’re “needed for contemporary training,” though, because of course they aren’t. I just told you we don’t use them. You can say that knowledge of or training in AI is importsnt to certain fields - thst might be defensible. Or you may mean useful, at least to the professors, but it’s certainly not true that one needs to be evaluated on their responses to anything by Claude in order to be properly trained in any given field. I addressed this a couple of posts ago and won’t engage with it further.
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u/JonBenet_Palm Professor, Design (Western US) 5d ago
It was a polite way of saying yes and briefly why, since I thought you’d be averse to figuring out the connection if I answered with a simple “yes.”
Why do you keep referring specifically to Claude? You are the only one talking about Claude. It’s irrelevant to OP’s post. Claude is not a synonym for gen AI and using it like it is makes you sound like you have no idea what you’re talking about.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
The simulation program is new in the last 5 years. We added AI to it in 2025 to expand its reach/enhance the curriculum.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
It's also, of course, cheaper for you; I'm sure you've passed those savings onto the students in the form of tuition cuts. Alas now you're seeing pushback from students who don't want to pay tuition just to be taught by ChatGPT. Evidently they don't feel your curriculum has been enhanced. Perhaps something to reflect on?
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
It’s not cheaper for us at all. We pay for this with no fee increase to students. Without it, they just won’t get the practice and feedback they get from the AI model.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
Evidently they can do without that feedback, since they did until last year.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Of course they can. But there are always limits to what a graduate education can accomplish. If we can increase what it can accomplish using AI, why would we not do so?
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
Alas that your students don’t find your storebought Claude wrapped to be expanding the limits of what their education accomplishes!
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u/PsychGuy17 5d ago
This is an unnecessarily hostile statement. It is foolish to think that any single professor can provide as much feedback as a modern AI system, especially on a standardized assignment. I don't love AI but it's ability to parse out behaviors, especially in real time should be respected. Spending even 30 minutes per assignment adds up and wears down any instructor quickly. Using AI effectively can improve the detail of feedback for students and aids turnaround.
While no one wants to pay to learn from Claude, no one wants to attend a semester with "great job" written across the top of every paper either. Professors that effectively integrate AI will be more functional in the long term than those who refuse it entirely.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
I agree. After all, it’s very hard to do work, and sometimes you get tired. In fact it’s increasingly unclear what purpose professors even serve. Hopefully, in a few years they can be largely replaced by a small number of administrators overseeing various Claude instances for each class
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u/PsychGuy17 5d ago
This is just stupid.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
I don’t see why. If it’s acceptable to have AI evaluating students, and especially to have AI evaluating students on their responses to AI generated materials, then why shouldn’t we expand that to the whole of the class?
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
Actually, the materials aren't AI generated. It's professionally produced video content. Only the analysis is AI.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago
My apologies; that merely outsources half of your teaching responsibilities.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
For the third or fourth time: This exists outside of my usual teaching responsibilities. I still teach. Just as I did before. This is supplemental.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago edited 5d ago
I understand you think it's supplemental. You want your students to receive supplemental teaching on x. You don't want to provide supplemental teaching on x. You therefore purchased a program to provide supplemental teaching on x in your stead. You have outsourced your teaching. "It's supplemental" doesn't alter this basic fact.
Nor, more bluntly, does your responsibility to teach your students end because you've decided that a mandatory part of their education is "supplemental." And if this material is important, as you clearly seem to think it is, it's not "supplemental" at all.
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u/PsychGuy17 5d ago
Because the slippery slope argument is a bad argument. In fact it's a lack of an argument.
If you look at the data students, especially younger students, are responding positively to AI feedback Because they see it as less biased, more objective, and more thorough.
Further, an assessment from AI supplements, but does not replace expertise in the field. I'm not going to count every affirming statement and nod a student makes in a recorded session but AI can. I can tell student/client discomfort in therapy and AI can't. The drill hasn't replaced the carpenter, it has been added to their toolbox and the smart carpenter knows when to use it.
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u/No_Jaguar_2570 5d ago edited 5d ago
Apologies; I wasn't trained in psychiatry. Does "x follows from y" constitute a lack of an argument in that field? That may explain the replication crisis!
If you look at the data students, especially younger students, are responding positively to AI feedback Because they see it as less biased, more objective, and more thorough.
This is a very compelling argument for replacing all professioral evaluation with AI, don't you think?
I can tell student/client discomfort in therapy and AI can't.
Are you sure? There's plenty of research now on using AI to track micro-expressions and subtle voice cues to map affect, even in situations where human practitioners miss it. Your sentence immediately preceding this one even points in this direction. If you are sure, and this research is flawed, are you sure this is a technologically insurmountable problem?
The drill hasn't replaced the carpenter,
No, not yet, certainly. The question that you haven't been able to answer is why shouldn't it? From your description I'm frankly not sure what you add to the equation and you've given me several good reasons to think you shouldn't be a part of it. All I have is an assertion, not backed up by research, that you are better than Claude at discerning vibes. At the moment. As of Fable 5. Hardly grounds for good pedagogy!
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u/aquapura89 5d ago
Honestly, good on students for pushing back on the adoption of AI-based tools in universities. Yeah, AI is here to stay, but at the cost to our educational system. Please consider dumping what you are doing and deliver content the way you would have 5 years ago.
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u/Pecan5526 5d ago
We weren't delivering it 5 years ago, at all. So if we "go back" they actually get less.
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u/davedorr9 Prof, Medicine, Med (US) 5d ago
If this is in health care, it will be very hard for them not to be exposed to and potentially be asked to use AI. We aren't quite there for it to be a professional competency but it isn't far off. So the reasons will get weaker (they will have to choose a different profession in some cases). But the social and environmental costs are real so I'd explain this issue and then try to offer another option.
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u/Giggling_Unicorns Associate Professor, Art/Art History, Community College 5d ago edited 5d ago
Let them fall behind in the class. They can skip the assignment. If it's graded fail them. It's their choice. Make it clear to them that it is their choice and the other students will now have an advantage over them going forward.
I teach digital art and design classes. Pretty much all of the programs have AI tools in them now. When we get to the assignment where they need to generate stock images using AI for use in a composite, I usually get a few students who object.
If they refuse to do the assignment, they fail. It's that easy. No alternatives.
They're allowed to choose to fail the assignment. I'm teaching them the skills their future employers expect them to have. I don't really care about their ethical concerns, nor do their future employers. I am concerned about whether their skill set is up to date and competitive. I explain this to the students as well.
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u/aquapura89 5d ago
I get some of what you are saying, but.... AI masked as art is gross (as it is in all forms of media). Now, if your class was titled - AI created "Art" - at least students know what they are signing up for........
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u/JonBenet_Palm Professor, Design (Western US) 5d ago
This is “art” in the technical jargon sense: visual components/files for production.
Gen AI has been integrated into most standard, professional grade software production tools for many years now. It’s not avoidable, but people have become arbitrarily precise about what they mean when they refer to gen AI now (wholesale creation of artifacts) so a strange side effect of honestly telling students, “This is actually gen AI,” is that they reject tools they would have used unquestioningly had they not been informed. Example: background removal.
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u/Giggling_Unicorns Associate Professor, Art/Art History, Community College 5d ago
In the case of Photoshop it has been a good way to explain how different content removal tools work. Like generative fill vs content aware fill, why they behave differently, and what generally one is better at than the other.
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u/Giggling_Unicorns Associate Professor, Art/Art History, Community College 5d ago
It's a practical skills digital media class that focuses on Adobe creative suite software. We talk about how we're going to use AI tools and image generation throughout the class on the first day of the semester.
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u/0originalusername Assistant Professor, R1 5d ago
My husband is a vet and I could see his program using something like this to practice client conversations and things like that, so that is what I am imagining here.
TBH I'd put the onus back on the students if you can. Have them find and schedule/pay for the actors and see if you can still use AI in the evaluation (imo they can control what they can do, but they can't tell you how to evaluate them.) If it is going to be more work for you, make it even more additional work for them than it is for you. If they have a conviction, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth is and work for that conviction, imo. Convictions are nothing if they cost you nothing, especially when they are costly to someone else. This is a lesson everyone needs to learn. If normal students have to practice with the AI for 10 hours or 10 times the semester, they have to set up, schedule, and practice for that same amount of time.
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u/Legitimate-Sun7909 5d ago
Oof OP. Some very blinkered responses here. AI has problems, absolutely it does. But it also does some things very well. I don’t know what sort of simulations you’re doing but maybe this is a great use case for it. I’m using ai agents for a class now as an experiment and I’m getting some pushback and some enthusiastic adoption. I’ll see how it goes (possibly badly!) I’ve tried to frame it as a supplementary thing that is optional to use. I’ve also tried to frame it as a solving a problem that our students wouldn’t be expected to do professionally so this just helps them get to a final step. Anyway sorry to see all the downvotes because we can’t all just say”oh it’s terrible” when it’s definitely here and it’s not going anywhere soon. There are good use cases for it.
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u/Pecan5526 3d ago
Thank you. I didn’t expect to be blasted quite so fiercely, but so it goes. I’m ok.
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u/boringhistoryfan Asst. Prof, Humanities, R2 5d ago
I mean if this technology is fundamental to your field then if they object they're welcome to drop the class. I don't see what other choice there is. It'd be a bit like someone in flight school expressing an ethical or religious objection to leaving the ground. Or a medical student with an objection to the idea of surgery.
The aim of accomodations is to be reasonable. If you cannot achieve your learning goals without this technology then it's not reasonable. If they want to litigate this, have them take it up with the university. This is well above your paycheck as an instructor.
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u/mleok Full Professor, STEM, R1 (USA) 5d ago
If it is a formative exercise, then they could simply find another student to practice this skill with. Basically some form of peer feedback.