“Teachers did not want to see almost every form of homework instantly be solvable by a computer. Employers did want highly-paid tasks that are only meaningful when done by humans (performance reviews, reporting) to be done by machines instead. Government officials did not want a perfect disinformation system released without any useful countermeasures. Released without a manual, no one really even knows what these tools are fully capable of. The world got much stranger, very quickly.”
— Ethan Mollick, “On Holding Back the Strange AI Tide”
Mollick, More Recently
“The Twilight of the Chatbots”: feeling the curve as shocks
“Being on an exponential means each change over a fixed window is larger than the one before it. If your organization wrote an AI plan any time before the winter of 2025, it described a system that could do a couple of hours of work with a fairly high error rate. A few months later, you can get sixteen hours or more of work from a single prompt. … We are very bad at feeling exponentials from the inside, and we are currently inside one.”
— Ethan Mollick, “The Twilight of the Chatbots”
Trying to Stop AI from Being Weird
Mollick: why the policies won’t work
“So, it is not surprising that so many people are trying to stop AI from being weird. Everywhere I look I see policies put in place to eliminate the disruption and weirdness that AI brings. These policies are not going to work. And, even worse, the substantial benefits of AI are going to be greatly reduced by trying to pretend it is just like previous waves of technology.”
— Ethan Mollick, “On Holding Back the Strange AI Tide”
The Future of Education in a World of AI
Mollick’s “fairly safe bets,” written back in April 2023
“AI cheating will remain undetectable and widespread.” Research has shown that, even in theory, it is impossible to build a perfect AI detector.
“AI technology will remain ubiquitous.” Unprecedented writing and analytical power, available to everyone.
“AI tutoring will be excellent, but not a replacement for classrooms.” Classrooms still provide practice, collaboration, socialization, and support from instructors.
Enter the Calculator
Mollick: the last time cheating got easy
A mid-1970s survey found 72% of teachers and laymen did not approve of 7th-grade students using calculators.
A few years later, 84% of teachers wanted calculators in their classrooms, but only 3% worked at schools that provided them.
“A practical consensus was achieved. Math education did not fall apart.”
“Just as calculators did not replace the need for learning math, AI will not replace the need for learning to write and think critically.”
A More Fundamental Transformation
Mollick: the positive vision
Lectures rely on passive learning; the research consensus favors active learning, but quality resources and teacher time keep it rare.
AI tutors plus flipped classrooms: personalized content delivery at home, class time freed for meaningful interaction. (“Why raise your hand in class when you can ask ChatGPT a question?” — one of his students)
“It may force us to change models, but it will be in a way that ultimately enhances learning and reduces busywork.”
Perils of the New Armchair Scholarship
Cohen: great answers are not the hard part
“Intellectual history contains both kinds of discoveries, but we wouldn’t want to block the latter, deep river of innovation, and if the overuse of AI in the production of scholarship reduces the velocity of the human mind and the vitality of intellectual scenes, we might find this source slowly drying up. It is worth remembering that asking good questions is harder than giving great answers. Insightful out-of-the-box approaches, often stemming from unusual, previously unasked queries, are the dark matter of human thought and progress, and they often come from the random interactions and odd interests of particular human beings. It is unclear how AI will replicate these uncommon vibrations and collisions.”
— Dan Cohen, “Perils of the New Armchair Scholarship”
No policy can stop education from changing…
…but we do need to work together if we want to be the ones who control the tide
Final Portfolio & Reflection (160 points, due Saturday, August 1). Compile your syllabus, teaching statement, signature assignment, and anything else you’re happy with into a new GitHub repository, build it into a portfolio with Claude Code, and deploy to GitHub Pages. Submit the link with your 750–1000 word reflection.
No late work can be accepted; final grades are due very soon. If an emergency arises, reach out to us immediately.
Readings: Mollick, “On Holding Back the Strange AI Tide” and “The Future of Education in a World of AI” (One Useful Thing).
Recommended: Cohen, “Perils of the New Armchair Scholarship” (Humane Ingenuity); Fiesler, on the Brown University AI cheating scandal (TikTok, @professorcasey).
See weeks/week-12.md on Canvas for the full guidelines and rubric.
