AI should be more widely embraced in education

Fear is a bad counsellor. Nevertheless, a wind of fear has been blowing at the university, caused by the growing influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on studies, students and, perhaps more importantly, forms of assessment.

For example, some fear that essays will become little more than digitised brain farts instead of well-considered meanderings done by students themselves, while others fear that the acquisition, distribution and production of knowledge will be undermined by AI.

A desperate attitude
There is certainly enough reason for my programme, the Master's in Constitutional and Administrative Law, to limit the progressive development of AI. Guidelines on how to deal with AI are the order of the day, and seminars are discussing what is and is not allowed.

The icing on the cake is that the forms of examination are also under scrutiny. The education committee of my Master's programme is discussing changing the essay format, no longer allowing students to write them at home. This idea stems from a fear of AI use.

This would be a bad idea from the point of view of skills development alone, yet the convulsive attitude is the most striking thing about it. People cling convulsively to the image of the university as a bastion of knowledge, the institution from which new theories grow, a breeding ground where people come up with ideas themselves.

This idealised image is being challenged by AI. Nowadays, being physically present at the university isn't always necessary anymore. All you need is your laptop: the academic world can unfold from the comfort of your own home, sitting in your underwear. With an average promptness, you can develop theories in any field of research with playful ease. Have we not necessarily moved beyond the classical ideal image of the university?

Clinging to what no longer exists
In the book ‘Reinventing Knowledge, From Alexandria to the Internet’, Ian F. McNeely and Lisa Wolverton list the institutions where knowledge was centred throughout history. There are six of them: the library of ancient Athens, medieval monasteries, universities, the ‘Republic of Letters’, the disciplines that broadened science, and the laboratory as a testing ground for new knowledge. All six institutions are characterised by a human or material coming together. New knowledge is created surrounded by people and/or paper. The seventh institute is easy to guess: the Internet. However, the Internet is difficult to reconcile with the previous six institutions.

Ironically, both the authors of Reinventing Knowledge and the university are not so charmed by the internet as the seventh institution. Both still lean too heavily on the damage the Internet does to the ‘classic’ six institutes. The reluctance to enter the new world is almost palpable, the authors would prefer to put the genie back in the bottle.

The reality is different. The university finds itself at a crossroads. It must choose between fearfully clinging to the past or being open to the new developments brought about by the Internet and AI.

Students are not what they could be
I argue for the latter. During my law studies, I have long noticed how the focus of the programme is on achieving results. This is also reflected in the study behaviour of students. They want to know exactly which rows of information they need to memorise and how they should regurgitate this in an exam to achieve a certain result. Workshops are not stimulating discourses about how we can make the world around us a little bit more beautiful but are focused on that one goal: results. That could change when the university lets go of its rigid attitude towards AI.

Today's students are mainly looking for certainty and benefiting from it. As a result, students are machines for producing results instead of the critical, engaged and creative students they could be. In my opinion, education pays too little attention to training socially engaged students, who are increasingly needed in a rapidly changing world.

New world, new possibilities
To achieve this, the university should be much more open to AI. Yes, AI can probably take over a large part of studying. Think of brainstorming or summarising texts. So education must challenge students in other ways, by coming up with new ideas and solutions for students' social field of study, for example. And yes, forms of assessment are experiencing the necessary consequences of this because students are coming up with ideas based on AI. 

It is not surprising that the university is anxious, as education relies heavily on the results model, a model at risk of being undermined by AI. But isn't that a blessing in disguise? If result-oriented work is replaced by results quickly found or designed online, there will be more time and space for what students can really excel at: coming up with new, creative and socially progressive solutions and ideas.

So let's stop letting churning out results and getting results be the guiding principles – after all, those tasks can be more easily taken over by AI. Instead, introduce students to real-life problems, have them familiarise themselves with the field of research based on literature and then have them come up with creative ideas to solve social problems or dilemmas. In this way, universities would no longer train the same result-oriented students but rather socially engaged students who would go on to make valuable contributions to the world to the world.

This op-ed was submitted to DUB by Pim Molenaar, Master's student Public Administration and Organisational Science. It only represents the point of view of its author and does not necessarily represent DUB's point of view.

You can also read Kars ten Berge and Wout van der Molen's op-ed: Teachers should be allowed to use AI to grade tests.