Grieving What AI Has Taken from Learning

“I wonder if these people have ever seen a student’s face when they finally understand something for the first time.” Jane Sloan Peters, a professor of religious studies and historical theologian at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, was talking with her students about changes she has made to her teaching so as to safeguard student learning from artificial intelligence when “a wave of sadness washed over me, and I actually got choked up in front of the class.” “Before AI,” I told them, “Students used to work hard to come up with their own ideas. I’d help, and they’d struggle, but they’d come to something that was their own. That doesn’t happen anymore and I grieve that.” Then I felt embarrassed and went on teaching as though nothing had happened. Her reflections on this experience will resonate with many Daily Nous readers. She identifies one of the many feelings she has been having about how AI is altering education as grief. [Trenton Doyle Hancock, detail of untitled etching…