I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse.
My students’ easy access to chatbots forced me to make humanities instruction even more human.
By Carlo Rotella
This tech-obsessed moment may have finally pushed humanists to identify the value of their disciplines and play to their strengths, after first going fetal for far too long when assailed by return-on-investment literalists who willfully misunderstand the fit between school and work (“There is no job called English or history”). Students feel pressure to use college to prepare intensively for a particular career, like training full-time as an amateur to play a sport professionally, but they will graduate into a working world where the games and rules keep changing...
For centuries now we’ve had machines that can lift more weight and move faster than human beings, and yet if you want to get stronger and faster you still have to lift the weight and run the distance yourself.