“AI Everywhere.” Not only is this a declaration that the average American resonates with, it is an aptly named strategy rolled out by San Jose University– and only one of many across California state universities. For better or worse, AI technology has already seeped into American institutions, and is making changes from the inside out. Under the leadership of Governor Gavin Newsom, the state of California has pushed AI integration into the scholastic world, signing million dollar deals with platforms including Google and Microsoft, ensuring student and faculty access to chatbots. An article in The New York Times investigated both the sentiments and side effects of the tech takeover that has erupted on college campuses. Riddled with division, the findings reveal the stakes of two camps: those who follow the AI current and those who wish to change the tide. 

Under the banner of creating an “A.I. work force of the future” California universities have faced pressure to bring academia into alignment with generative AI use. Faculty who resist AI dependence risk layoffs, and students who cling to an old-school work ethic (doing the work themselves) are at a disadvantage. Competing with peers who have adopted digitized “learning,” AI skeptics are at a disadvantage to their counterparts who use AI to save time and effort. Among the interviews referenced in the article, one professor disclosed several drastic alterations in his course structure. He utilized chat bots as a “teaching tool,” reduced the number of writing assignments longer than a paragraph,  and developed ones that required students to hand in their A.I. chat logs instead.  Rather than require students to read classic philosophy, the same professor generated robotic avatars of the authors themselves for student engagement. The Communist Manifesto was swapped for Marxgpt, and The Spirit of Capitalism for Webergpt. The state integration plan moves beyond the goal of merely providing access to AI, as it actively sanctions efforts to encourage AI use in student life through campus ambassador programs. One student participant described their dedication to the AI cause, holding “at least two ChatGPT events per semester” and teaching fellow undergraduates “how to use it to jazz up their Linkedin profiles and prepare for exams”. 

Increased reliance on digital resources in education hardly began with AI breakthroughs. The pandemic notably acclimated an entire generation to remote learning, and physical enrollment has continued to plummet. A professor from San Francisco State University, elaborating on the crisis of academic tradition, said, “Demographic decline and the rise of remote learning has meant that there are fewer students physically on campus than ever before.” Traditional education standards, such as independent reading and writing, continue to dwindle. The number of American adults scoring at the lowest tiers of literacy have jumped from 19% to 28% since 2020 and about 38% of eighth-grade students now perform below proficient reading levels. Barring a miraculous upswing, the dire state of academic progress paired with AI reliance is likely to reach an impasse between the”old-school” purists and the “age of tomorrow” enthusiasts. The primary stakeholders in state initiatives for AI friendly education are not engineers and institutional budgets. They are parents invested in raising children of well-formed character, upcoming generations hoping to make human impact, consumers trying to make decisions with critical thought, and a nation that depends on curiosity and competence to grow. Our academic institutions are meant to inspire such qualities. But one by one, universities seem to be moving the goalposts of what it means to learn, and why it matters. 

Being able to navigate AI technology is likely to be a prerequisite for the workforce, and the occasional course serving to prepare undergraduates accordingly would be appropriate. But the integration initiative intends to make AI education the rule, rather than the exception. You might assume that our academic institutions would seek to protect the integrity of academics just as they have sought preservation of the fine arts. Regardless of ideological differences, journalists, professors, and philosophers alike have stood on common ground when it comes to the value of curiosity and the written word. Actively training students to operate with half their own mind and half an artificial one is an inversion of all that educators once believed in. The AI initiative betrays more than practical governance. It signifies a complete change of heart. Reading and writing are no longer considered valuable for their own sake. Their esteemed position in the education hierarchy has been threatened by the flashiness of convenience and the glamour of profit. While some might wish to afford academia the benefit of the doubt, higher ups are not unaware of education’s downward spiral, nor do they lack the aptness to predict that the AI push will accelerate its speed. If the institution wished to reverse the troubling trends of literacy, it would strive to keep AI out of the classroom rather than allow it to teach. The cultural currents are clear and formidable. Students who go upstream have a daunting task, but not a hopeless one. Swimmers who can paddle on their own may prove stronger than those who never learned to wade without a raft.