Widespread adoption of AI in classrooms can damage student communication skills, reasoning, and knowledge by reducing opportunities to practice writing and synthesis. Efforts to deploy AI broadly in teaching and learning risk weakening teacher-student relationships and the quality of feedback. Instances of AI grading have produced vague or insufficient comments after extensive student work. Reliance on AI can harm career prospects for students pursuing communications fields. Some prospective employers are requiring screen sharing during writing tests to verify authenticity. Intensive teacher training to understand and manage AI risks is essential.
That's a scenario a student recounted to Alex Green, an author and professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. Green told Business Insider that the "AI evangelism" push - efforts to use AI across classrooms to make both teaching and learning easier - is doing more harm than good, undermining critical relationships between teachers and students. Whether teachers or students are using AI, Green said it's leading to a loss of "so many fundamental communication skills," like knowledge and reasoning.
"My job, in part, is to help prepare them to go get jobs," Green said. He added that he heard from some of his students that their prospective employers required them to share their screens while they take writing tests to ensure they're not using AI. "And so what would I be doing for them if I said to them, 'No, no, you can just use these indiscriminately, and how you write and how you think and how you synthesize ideas doesn't really matter?'"
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