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An unusual bill sailed through both houses of the California state legislature this week. It aims to make sure that courses at the state’s community colleges have to be taught by qualified humans, not AI bots. 

Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat who introduced the legislation, said in a statement that the goal is to “provide guardrails on the integration of AI in classrooms while ensuring that community college students are taught by human faculty.”

To be clear, no one appears to have actually proposed replacing profs with ChatGPT or other tools in the state’s colleges. And even the bill’s leaders say they can imagine positive uses for AI in teaching, and the bill wouldn’t stop colleges from using chatbots to help with things like grading or creating educational materials.

But champions of the bill also say they have reason to worry about future displacement. Earlier this year, for instance, a dean at Boston University sparked concern among faculty members when he listed AI as one possible strategy for handling course discussions and other classroom activities while graduate students there were on strike. Officials at the university later clarified that they had no intention of replacing any teaching assistance with AI software, though.

The California bill is a sign of the mixed but highly charged mood among many college faculty members — who see both promise and potential threat in generative AI tech.

Ethan Mollick, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has become a prominent voice on AI in education, wrote in his newsletter this week that he worries that many businesses and organizations are too focused on efficiency and downsizing as they rush to adopt AI technologies. Instead, he argues that leaders should be focused on finding ways to rethink how they do things to take advantage of tasks AI can do well.

“I worry that the lesson of the Industrial Revolution is being lost in AI implementations at companies,” he wrote. “It is as if, after getting access to the steam engine in the 1700s, every manufacturer decided to keep production and quality the same, and just fire staff in response to new-found efficiency, rather than building world-spanning companies by expanding their outputs.”

The professor said his university’s new Generative AI Lab is trying to model the approach he’d like to see, where researchers work to explore evidence-based uses of AI and work to avoid what he called “downside risks.” And he says the lab is committed to sharing what it learns.

He noted that even the companies building these new large language models haven’t yet figured out what real-world tasks they are best suited to do. 

“We need to figure it out together,” he concluded, “because there is nobody else who can.”

👂COLUMNIST CORNER

KILLING TIME: “What does it mean for work to be done so quickly? What is the cost?” Evi Wusk, an assistant professor of edtech, wonders. In this essay, Wusk reflects on time, work and the influence of AI on teaching and learning, asking readers to think about whether, in our pursuit of reducing the time it takes to do things, we’ve forgotten to consider the value of the experience.

The following is a message from our sponsor

Are you faculty in a teacher prep program looking to create lasting change in how teacher candidates are trained? By signing the Digital Equity and Transformation Pledge, developed by ISTE and the U.S. Department of Education, you’ll join nearly 100 deans across the U.S. committed to developing confident teachers for digitally connected classrooms. Learn more about ISTE offerings. 

🎧 ON THE PODCAST

COLLEGE WITHIN A HIGH SCHOOL?: As more students question the value of college, more high schools are bringing college options into their walls. In the latest installment of our Doubting College series, we visit a high school where students can earn a two-year degree.

📈 STAT-O-MATIC

59 percent

That’s the share of U.S. high school and college students in a new survey who said they believe artificial intelligence will have more of a negative than positive effect on society in the next 10 years. The national survey conducted by the National Society of High School Scholars polled more than 10,000 students in Generation Z about their views on AI. It also found that 62 percent say they are worried that the tech will take away jobs they are interested in. (THE Journal)

📣 SPOKEN WORD

“With the appeals and results coming just days before decision day, we decided to just play it safe and go with the most affordable, lower-risk option.” 

— Mary Gazdik, a parent describing the troubles she and her family had with the botched rollout of the revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid this year. The unexpected delays led to stress and changes of plan for all kinds of prospective college students this year. (Inside Higher Ed)

💼 BYTE-SIZE BRIEFS

The Educational Testing Service offered buyouts to most of its U.S. workforce this week, part of its second round of job cuts in under a year. (Inside Higher Ed)

After the end of race-conscious admissions, application trends didn’t shift. But the analysis has just begun. (Chronicle of Higher Education)

University of the Arts’ sudden closure draws state, city reviews. (Higher Ed Dive)

💾 FROM THE ARCHIVES

GATECRASHER: Intro to chemistry and freshman calculus tend to “weed out” students from being able to pursue certain college majors. But what if that didn’t have to happen? One effort aims to help professors of so-called gateway courses select courseware tools based on how well they help all students succeed.

📆 GOINGS ON

Look for the next issue of EdSurge Higher Ed on July 5. 

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