Since the unveiling of OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT platform in the fall of 2022, educators across the country have been in a tailspin trying to figure out whether generative AI is a technological tchotchke or an existential threat.

What does it mean for English class if students can prompt a machine to read a book and write the essay about it? What does it mean for patient safety if health science majors are using AI to make judgments about care? If intellectual traditions and professional practices can now be digested and spit back out in seconds, what can and should learning in 2025 look like?

In the wake of ChatGPT and its ilk, we’ve seen a lot of institutions make the wrong moves. Especially early on, many defaulted to AI bans and tough talk while others barely reacted at all, leaving faculty to figure it out on their own. The response de jour is to sign long-term contracts with one of the big AI companies and demand AI-integration across the curriculum.

None of these is the right way to facilitate learning and there is no room for Pollyanna wishery — for a screen-free utopia or a techno-paradise — when it comes to students’ educational futures.

The trouble with these responses is that they oversimplify the situation in order to cope with the understandable fear that AI can engender. But perhaps even scarier than the technology itself, the AI moment has forced higher ed to acknowledge that modern college teaching has needed a jumpstart for a........

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