Harvard: AI in the Classroom, an Essential Yet Regulated Tool

AI, an Educational Ally at Harvard

As a professor at Harvard, I encourage my students to integrate artificial intelligence into their assignments. AI is used as a research and editing tool, but it should not replace their own thinking. My goal is to teach students how to use AI to formulate better arguments, but its use should stop there.

I remember November, when ChatGPT was launched, followed by exam season. I observed students, usually graded B+, submitting essays adorned with dashes and Oxford commas, as if they had signed with Penguin. While their writing seemed to improve miraculously, their voices blended into what we now call "AI mush." As one of the first victims of this phenomenon, I refuse to succumb to the ludditism that drives some institutions to shut the door on AI. Instead, I have chosen to integrate AI into every aspect of my teaching, as failing to do so would soon be seen as a dereliction of my duty.

Training Generation Z for Responsible AI Use

Every generation faces challenges when entering the job market, but few encounter as many hurdles as my Generation Z students. The news often suggests that their struggles stem from a mix of laziness and a need for belonging, forgetting that youth has always been blamed for society's ills, dating back to Aristotle. In reality, they are struggling because they are asked to excel in two areas that are foreign to them. They enter institutions without answer keys or grade booklets, at a time when tools, which no one teaches them about, are redefining work.

When AI takes over the workplace, the answer is not to pretend these tools do not exist. The answer is to teach people how to use them correctly.

Encouraging Thoughtful AI Use

In my courses, the most important lesson I convey to my undergraduate students is the same one I teach in my executive training: use AI responsibly, with a mindset focused on personal growth rather than results. I start by asking my students not to lie to themselves about the type of AI user they are becoming.

• Are they centaurs, with half of their essays cut from ChatGPT, or cyborgs, with AI agents writing their emails while they sleep and automatically reviewing their Uber Eats orders?
• Perhaps they are artisans, clinging more and more to what remains of their humanity?

Whatever path they choose, the practice of using AI for growth could not be simpler.

Basic Rules for Using AI

We begin by recognizing one of AI's greatest strengths: its ability to quickly synthesize vast corpuses of knowledge and connect ideas across disparate silos. Students familiarize themselves with ChatGPT's in-depth research, Perplexity's searches in academic journals, and Gemini's ability to identify flaws in their arguments before they even type a single word.

If they encounter particularly challenging pieces, as is often the case in my economics courses, they are allowed to use AI to help them "explain it as if I were five years old" and to apply ideas directly, rather than having to earn a PhD to understand what they have found. But when it comes to writing the arguments themselves, my number one rule is to put AI on "pause." The goal is to capture their thought in its rawest form and give their reflections a function before giving it form, even if that means relying on voice notes to advance our arguments.

Once my students know what they want to say, AI comes back to help them, this time as an editor and critic. I ask students to submit their chains of arguments to AI so it can identify gaps, suggest further readings, and help finalize concepts that have been pulled from the oven a bit too early. In this way, the argument improves, but the thought remains theirs.

Where I Draw the Line

Even in a classroom where AI is integrated as completely as mine, this is where the limit must be set. AI cannot think for us, and as teachers, we must help students resist the temptation. When students feel pressured to achieve perfection, the temptation to hand over the entire process to AI can become too strong to resist.

Reflecting on the essays I have received now compared to those from December 2022, the lesson could not be clearer. The best students are not those who avoid using AI. On the contrary, they are the ones who know when and where to stop using it.