As Students in the AI Age, This Is the Choice We Face.

Who knows whether generative artificial intelligence will transform our world — but there’s at least one place where its impact has been felt profoundly: our campus.

Pundits foretell an age of AI-augured academic dishonesty. Professors worry that their assignments are either too vulnerable to AI — or don’t teach enough of its worthwhile uses. The new Dean of Harvard College even dedicated his convocation remarks to offering guidance for the AI age.

Faculty efforts to adapt and prioritize learning in this brave new world are certainly worthwhile. But as it becomes easier and easier to churn out a passable paper undetected with just a few keystrokes, the responsibility of deciding whether or not to rely on AI — and, indeed, determining the very purpose of our education — ultimately falls to us students.

As people who face this choice each day, here’s how we think about it.

On the one hand, we came to Harvard because we care about the slow, laborious — but ultimately transformative — work of learning the liberal arts. We know firsthand that to take the time to write an essay or to read a book is to come out the other side a different person. But between persistent preprofessionalism, ever-expanding extracurriculars, and a general pressure to always do more, how many of us really have the time for all that transforming?

On the other hand, Harvard — despite its liberal arts bona fides — often seems more like a trade school for entreé into the economic upper crust. And if the aim is producing the most productive graduates, we ought to learn to use AI and use it well. After all, there’s little immediate value in learning to write code ChatGPT can generate in an instant or completing a reading when a summary is at our fingertips — especially at the expense of skills more applicable to life in the workforce.

Still, as the rise of AI itself demonstrates, the professional world is changing fast. In the long run, learning how best to use the flashiest tool of the day is hardly a risk-free path. We can’t predict which skills will and won’t be valued or replaced in a decade. Today’s prompt engineers could easily become tomorrow’s switchboard operators.

These competing crosscurrents — between career-oriented striving and the life of the mind — don’t seem likely to subside anytime soon. So to our professors: Consider the perspective of your students wrestling with the decision of whether to transform or optimize. Are the readings and problem sets you assign meaningful and engaging — or easy to skip or circumvent without penalty?

And to our fellow students: Read the books you want to read, even when the ecosystem you find yourself in drives you to skip them. Think through your p-sets instead of feeding them to ChatGPT.

Harvard tells newly admitted students that “a transformative college experience awaits” — but that’s only true if we do the work.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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