OPINION: Naivety in the face of AI is unacceptable

This is an opinion piece; the views expressed in the column are the writer’s own.

Res novum, the new things of our time. This is how the Pope recently described artificial intelligence in his first encyclical to Catholics around the world. In this, Pope Leo warns against a naive approach to AI, which he describes as a new Tower of Babel for humanity. 

Who would have thought that the often foot-dragging Catholic Church would be more in tune with reality than a university? That, at least, is what can be assumed when one sees how AI is allowed to make its way into Aarhus University virtually unchallenged: For is it not the case that new exam formats (In Danish, ed.) are designed to evaluate students’ use of AI; that students are replacing study partners with AI partners, which act as a filter between the student and the knowledge base contained in the texts that the AI reads on the student’s behalf; that PhD students are taking courses on AI search and how to prompt their way to a finished thesis; and that researchers are questioning their own role as text-generating agents of knowledge? 

AI is the res novum of our time, and it will play a significant role in societies around the world. Let’s agree on that. AI can be a useful tool for the right tasks – especially in academia – and there is no end to the wonders the tech industry promises in the wake of AI. So it’s foolish to dismiss the technology as insignificant. But it is certainly even worse to uncritically invite artificial intelligence into the very place where human intelligence, more than anywhere else, needs to be nurtured: the university. 

Feature article drew criticism 

A feature article written by the Arts Faculty management earlier this year sparked a debate in which both students and researchers challenged the openness towards AI that the management—in the shape of Dean Maja Horst and Vice-Dean Niels Lehmann— demonstrated on behalf of the entire Arts Faculty. For instance, AU students have criticised management’s view in writing (In Danish, ed.) and expressed concerns over the proposed new AI-friendly exam formats. Professor of History Mary Hilson has also criticised the management’s stance in an opinion piece on technological determinism, and, according to Associate Professor Jens-Bjørn Riis Andresen, openness to AI will undermine the entire scholarly tradition upheld by the university. That debate is taking place, and it deserves to continue. The critical voices deserve to come together. 

A critical approach to AI appears to be important to Lehmann and Horst, if their response in Omnibus is anything to go by. But it seems that this critical approach to AI is ultimately a step towards embracing the powerful technology even more wholeheartedly.

This is also the conclusion reached in a recent opinion piece (In Danish, ed.) by Lehmann and Horst, in which they seek to address the challenges posed by AI in higher education by proposing a requirement for attendance. But is the solution really to restrict students’ freedom rather than to limit the pervasiveness of AI?

A counterbalance to apathy and naivety

We need a counterbalance for both apathetic technological determinism and naive tech-optimism.

That is why the AI-Critical Network at AU has been created.

Here, critical voices of both students and researchers can come together in the recognition that AI already has, and will continue to have, far-reaching consequences. Lured by the prospect of better grades and a lighter workload, students are letting AI do the work that is actually supposed to teach them how to think. This has already had an impact on secondary schools, where exam grades are expected to fall drastically due to the widespread use of AI. Under pressure from the research world’s quantified incentive system and a focus on securing research funding, researchers are making both their articles and their teaching follow the same AI-driven template.

From boos to balance

There are already several viral videos circulating online of graduating college students in the US booing the graduation speaker when they start talking about how the graduates’ future is tied to AI. At the AI-Critical Network AU, we do not wish to boo anyone. We want students to feel confident in the balance between hard-earned knowledge and smart AI-assisted information, and between creative writing skills and AI prompting skills, which their degree programmes provide. We want to make sure that they do not end up disillusioned, holding a degree certificate that has either been rendered obsolete by a technological revolution or has been undermined from within by misguided priorities that erode the knowledge base on which university education is founded. We want researchers to be able to improve their skills with the help of new, useful technology, without spending their time and the intellectual property of a field of study, a university, and a country, on training the products of private companies. 

We hope that students and researchers – and, ideally, the university management as well – will take a critical approach to AI both within and outside the university.

Anders Haagerup is a PhD student in the Department of Theology at the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University and is the founder of the AI-Critical Network AU.

This text is machine translated and post-edited by Mie Skov Jeppesen.