be proud to be human!

Because I’ve spent much of my career thinking about how technology can make teaching and learning more inclusive and student-focused, OF COURSE I have opinions about the ways that “AI”* is impacting our brains and classrooms. And I believe that the most important thing for all of us to remember is that we should be proud to be human!

I’m writing this in the summer of 2026. The first time I first addressed the role of “AI”* in the classroom here on my website was three years ago in this blog post, where I said:

In the age of AI, where too much content sounds vague and bland, students need to be colorful. They need to be sincere, to be genuinely themselves. This is how they are going to stand out on the job market. Employers want teamwork, critical and creative thinking, problem solving, and other skills that AI just can’t handle.

Three years later, this is more true than ever. The companies behind LLMs (Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Claude) know this is true, which is why they are buying, scanning, and destroying older and “less common” books to make their LLMs sound … well, less like LLMs. (For more info, please check out Snopes’ Fact Check on this topic.)

* Before we proceed: “AI” is a messy, imprecise bucket term that covers a wide swath of technological territory. Depending on who you’re talking to, they may include anything from spell check to highly-focused, industry-specific machine learning. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m focusing on “Generative AI” and “Large-Language Models” because those platforms (including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DALL-E, etc) are what most of us are choosing to use – or not – as part of our teaching, learning, and daily lives. Want to know more about how to define “AI” vs “GenAI” vs “Machine Learning”? This page is a helpful place to start.

ALSO – yes, I’m aware that these discussions can easily lose nuance, especially when it comes to accessibility and inclusivity. I don’t personally have accessibility needs that intersect with this conversation, so please know that my thoughts here reflect that. I’d like to thank the colleagues and students who regularly help me to recognize how their needs and experiences are different to mine and to broaden my thinking in this area.

This is not a question. If you use GenAI or LLMs, you are either OK with the negative impact they have on our world’s climate, including the amount of water their data centers steal from human communities, the effect that they have on residential electric bills, and all the other ways that corporations are prioritizing data centers over human beings … or you are choosing to ignore it. Either way, you need to know and be accountable for that choice.

GenAI and LLMs are “trained” using the work of artists, writers, photographers, graphic designers, filmmakers, and others. The work of these creatives is being used without their consent. This is not fair use; it is theft. Just because it’s carried out by corporations with expensive lawyers doesn’t change that fact. You can read more about this here, here, here, here, and lots of other places too.

An MIT study has shown that using LLMs harms brain development and critical thinking skills. If you’re a student who wants a job when you graduate (I’m assuming that this is true, at least until we abolish capitalism!), you’re going to need your critical thinking skills.

And it’s about more than just job prospects. Not to sound all conspiracy-theory, but “the man” has always been anti-education. The more educated our society is and the better we are at creative problem solving, the greater our chances of improving life for everyone, rather than concentrating success and power in the hands of the 1%.

And if we would rather ask ChatGPT to plan our next vacation or decide what to serve at our next barbecue instead of doing it ourselves, then that says something pretty depressing about our desire to make the world a place that’s better for the many instead of just the few.

At best, GenAI is inauthentic and soulless. For just one example, think about Coca-Cola’s GenAI holiday commercials. When you ask Gemini or ChatGPT to generate an essay response, it doesn’t even sound like a human being wrote it, because LLMs aren’t actually “intelligent” – they can’t learn beyond their programming.

Those limits mean that they regurgitate the racial and cultural biases that have been fed into them. And their lack of a moral and ethical compass has led users to self-harm and suicide. And yes, we should find that alarming.

Of course, they also churn out plenty of answers that are just plain wrong. Bad data in = bad data out, and there’s certainly plenty of bad data out there for LLMs to consume! Sometimes this may be funny, but other times it is dangerous.

If you’re a student, this can definitely make you look bad. I’m talking everything from hallucinated quotes to names of countries that don’t even exist. In one memorable example from my own experience, ChatGPT told my students that Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” takes place in a matriarchal society. The tale is actually set at the court of King Arthur … about as far from a matriarchal society as you can imagine. Yes, women in the story have agency and power, but a matriarchal society it is NOT.

When faced with all of this, I say let’s just be our human selves! Humans are, in fact, AMAZING! We can question and create and imagine and innovate, and those are the skills and abilities that we need to shape a better future. To borrow a phrase from Procreate, I’m here for the humans, and I believe that human creativity and imagination are worth putting in the time and effort.

I also believe it’s important to start conversations like this from a positive place instead of a negative one. I want to be “pro-human,” and not just “anti-AI.” (This is the same reason I prefer the term “collaborative evaluation” to “ungrading,” but that’s a different conversation…) Yes, I want to minimize my students’ reliance on GenAI, but I don’t want to come up with “AI-proof” projects. Instead, my goal is to help my students trust themselves, their own voices and their own understanding rather than feeling like a chatbot could do a “better” job than they can.

So how do I implement this in my classes? How do I keep the focus on human skills and creativity rather than just being “anti-AI”?

One of the reasons that students cheat, plagiarize, or turn to LLMs instead of doing their own assignments is that they feel the work isn’t meaningful to them. No one likes busy work, and no one should think that the point of college is to “turn something in,” get a grade, and repeat until you graduate. That’s got exactly zero to do with learning. Yes, learning involves doing work and having that work evaluated, but that is a process, not the purpose.

The work students do in college should build their skills, develop their critical thinking and creative problem solving, and prepare them not just for a future career but for a meaningful and engaged life after college. And yes, I think it should be satisfying – and sometimes even fun – to do that. 

So it’s on me to make sure all of my projects do these things. I talk through the skills that each project develops and help students understand WHY I’m asking them to do that project. I am open to questions, challenges, and alternative student-suggested ideas,

Another reason that students turn to LLMs is that they are busy, overworked, and often struggle with time management. One of the key things I do that has resulted in better student work is to build as much flexibility with deadlines as possible into my class schedules.

I know this may not always reflect “real world” work environments, and may be super-challenging in some cumulative, skills-based classes where each unit builds on what came before … but if you’re a professor and you can find ANY way to be more flexible, you’re showing your students that you know their time is important and that they have a lot going on in their lives.

There are a few ways to do this:

The more choices we have in the work we do, the more invested we all are in the outcome. Here are some ways that I build choice into my classes:

Are you an instructor looking for specific project ideas? Here are some of my favorites. Are these guaranteed to be “AI-proof”? No promises. But they are the kinds of projects that have resulted in the best student buy-in and some really great creative and critical thinking. Some of these have been inspired / remixed by other great profs out there and I have done my best to give credit where credit is due.

Want to learn more about why we should all focus on being proud humans rather than relying on GenAI? Want to share those ideas with your students? Here’s a great selection of readings, chosen with undergraduate students in mind from a list compiled by the helpful folx at Against AI.