The loss that he describes is deeper and more existential than anything academic integrity can protect: a specific, if perhaps decaying, way of being among students and their teachers. “AI has already changed the classroom into something I no longer recognize,” he told me. In this view, AI isn’t a harbinger of the future but the last straw in a profession that was almost lost already, to funding collapse, gun violence, state overreach, economic decay, credentialism, and all the rest. New technology arrives on that grim shore, making schoolwork feel worthless, carried out to turn the crank of a machine rather than for teaching or learning.
Mostly this will just be something that kicks their teeth in down the line. Cheating is always an option, but then you are just learning to cheat, not learning the material, and everything is always cumulative for knowledge in most classes. If you don't get the basics, you won't even know how to create the correct questions to generate a good response to more complicated topics, or even know if the response generated makes any sense.