In Praise of Resistance
Why we should empower faculty and students to push against AI
I'm not very good at toeing the line. I never have been.
In many ways, that was what drew me to academia in the first place. I found a place where I could go as deep as I wanted, where I could push against social norms, where I could resist.
That ability to think and resist—two activities which have always been intimately connected for me—made college beautiful to me.
I've carried that with me in my classrooms.
I always push to go deeper. Often, that's what makes our opinions diverge. We push onward and, in the process, try to figure out where we see things similarly and where we see things differently.
I don't toe the line. And I don't ask my students to.
That's what has made the idea that “AI is inevitable, so we all need to embrace it” such a difficult pill to swallow.
The Pill
Don't get me wrong.
I use Generative AI for many things. Though to I be perfectly honest, I use it much less now than I did a year ago.
I find it useful for specific tasks. I can compile data more quickly, find patterns that would otherwise escaped, and create rudimentary games quickly.
But I am one person.
I never assume that someone else finds Gen-AI useful. I also never assume that someone else should teach with it, even if I do.
That's why I don't buy this idea that faculty should stop resisting.
There are many good reasons to resist Gen-AI:
Hallucinations
Its environmental impact
The bias build into the systems
The unethical use of others’ content
Its capacity for offloading critical thinking
Its effect on human-to-human interaction
And yet there's this assumptions that resistance is futile and that we should just shut up and get on with things.
That's not how things should work.
Many faculty and students resist the technology. And that's a good thing.
A Quick Clarification
Before I move forward, I have a quick caveat.
There are different kinds of resistance.
Sometimes, we resist because we fear something. Or because we don't understand it. There are certainly faculty who resist AI for that reason.
But more and more, I see faculty resisting Gen-AI for another reason: they understand it and have done their research, but see the technology as working against the values of their classrooms.
It's that second form of resistance we need to empower.
What It Means to Adapt
I do believe we're at a critical moment in education.
It's time to adapt.
But here's the thing.
Resistance isn't an obstacle to adapting. It's a pivotal part of the process.
Resistance stops is from getting carried away. It stops us from giving into AI hype. It stops us from diving all-in, only for AI companies to hike prices up to an unsustainable level. (OpenAI might make future models prohibitively expensive.)
If we hand over power to only those who “embrace” AI (whatever that mean) and silence those who resist, we're going to be in trouble.
We should be working together.
That means giving everyone a seat at the table, even if (especially if) they resist the technology that companies are trying to shove into our classrooms.
If nothing else, our students get to see someone speak out with conviction about their own beliefs and values.
I can think of worse things.
Not really, Jason. I heard an anecdote about a student taking a business communication course last Spring, learning to write various genres of business emails. Her professor insisted that AI not be used for work in the course. Simultaneously, this student had taken a temp job at a business. She was responsible for personalizing emails generated by AI, which very quickly made the finite number of genres immediately apparent to her. Time to write a complex email dropped from an hour to ten minutes. Having to customize the text was instructive and improved her ability and speed at completing class assignments which otherwise would have been busy work. This resistance to AI is not easy to classify as “good” or “bad” resistance. But it’s very real and it’s not in anyone’s interest. I think part of the issue with writing about an abstraction like “resistance” and then issuing an opinion—everyone has one, right?—is fanning the flames of resistance during a time when the fire is already intensely hot. You are certainly in the right to hold this position and to argue for it. I’m trying to point out some consequences.
Jason, your argument is circular if I’m understanding you. Faculty resistance is a ubiquitous response to virtually anything that threatens their tried and true techniques and exams. I learned this fact through years of experience as a university assessment coordinator. They have the right to resist anything requiring change; therefore, anything should be resisted if it requires change. Inertia in higher education is eroding the reach of universities in this era. Universities should be leading, not following complacently. I realize I’ve used a modality that shifts from a factual to an ethical discourse, but I shudder to think of the consequences for university and for learning if your opinion is wide spread. I understand stubborn, but I wonder whether the university can withstand the intensity of stubborn I hear in your post.