Last week, Princeton announced a plan to provide paid versions of ChatGPT to all faculty, staff, and students who request it. However, the University’s broad allocation of the more basic Plus version lacks pedagogic grounding and takes a fundamentally reactive approach to a technology with uncertain effects. We think it is clear that AI is not academically necessary to a large portion of the student body and may have destructive consequences. Since that distinction largely depends on what students are studying, we believe that Princeton should implement a department-specific approval process.
As our colleagues on the News team reported, students and faculty “at large appear to not have been consulted or informed” ahead of the announcement of the program. University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince,’ “We are planning additional opportunities for faculty feedback prior to the rollout to students.” But broader consultation to inform the University’s action should have happened before, not after.
Upon initial consideration, the ChatGPT pilot seems to be just another instance of the University’s ill-considered decision-making. Both last year’s dining decision and last month’s orientation changes generated significant student opposition. Yet the impact of this pilot is far more consequential to the University’s mission. The University does not necessarily owe us first-year orientation or independent dining status, but it does owe us a rigorous education dedicated above all to developing our ability to think independently. AI has transformed the mechanics of learning, subverting the fundamental values of our education: We are not convinced that a sweeping ChatGPT pilot will suit the distinct learning methods across disciplines.
The research on how AI affects learning is still an emerging field, but there is some evidence to suggest that in a university setting, the use of chatbots can be detrimental to students. Eric Klopfer, an MIT professor who chaired a committee studying the use of AI at the university, told The Washington Post that AI can lead to “the illusion of learning.”
We recognize that different fields have different relationships with this technology, and University policy must come to that realization as well. Through providing universal access to ChatGPT Plus, the University grants the same baseline discretion to computer science majors, who often require artificial intelligence for coding, as English majors, whose subjective analysis is largely dependent on their own critical thinking. Although the University does not describe the pilot as an endorsement of ChatGPT or use of generative AI tools (indeed, as one of our colleagues pointed out, it seems to run counter to Dean of the College Michael Gordin’s suggested teaching philosophy), its choice to provide access to all students incorrectly treats AI as a universal student need.
Luckily, the University still has an opportunity to demonstrate that it is committed to the fundamental mission of education, even as it rolls out this AI pilot. We believe that Princeton administrators should defer to the academic departments to determine who gets paid access, as they are uniquely placed to establish procedures for all students to justify why they might need a paid model of ChatGPT. This narrower approval process would allow appropriate usage based on context — the computer science department, for instance, might allow all of the seniors to use AI-assisted code in their theses, while an English student might only get access if they were working on a Python-heavy digital humanities project.
Princeton has models to follow in this implementation. In the economics department, for example, students are only given access to Stata licenses contingent upon taking certain courses or declaring the major. While a similar ChatGPT policy would not prevent students from purchasing subscriptions on their own, it would signal that Princeton is at least considering the dangers of AI rather than embracing the technology without consideration.
The University has not yet proven that it remains committed to its most fundamental educational values. We believe that the administration fundamentally erred in its implementation of the ChatGPT pilot. But, through a more considered rollout of AI permissions, it can still prove its commitment to Princeton’s core mission.
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The 150th Editorial Board is an institutional voice of The Daily Princetonian and consists of seven members. It convenes on a regular basis to discuss issues and current events of interest to the Princeton University community, as well as collectively write signed editorials addressing them, which reflect the consensus of a majority of the Board’s membership. To ensure independence, the Board works separately from the newsroom of the ‘Prince,’ and its members do not cover the topics of their editorials in that capacity for the paper.
