How Should College Students Navigate A.I.? By the Oldest, Truest Stars.

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

At the start of the fall semester five years ago, all anybody here at Duke could talk about was Covid. How often should students and faculty be tested? How long should an infected person stay away? Masking in classrooms was mandatory, informal social gatherings of more than 50 people were prohibited, and there was a potent, deeply sad sense that this disruption to education would be more than consequential. It would be definitional, forever marking the pupils and professors who slogged through it.

Today, as a new academic year commences, I don’t hear anyone on campus mention Covid anymore. There’s no conversational space for it amid all the ruminations, lamentations and expectorations about A.I. Many of us professors recast courses and rejigger assignments to ward off students’ use of it; many of those students plot their majors in a prophylactic fashion, trying to guess which jobs........

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