Professor goes viral for saying AI has "changed the job for the worse" and the replies prove his point
So this professor Peter Raleigh went viral on X basically saying AI has ruined his ability to grade papers. His main points:
- He hates finding AI use
- He hates the paranoia
- He hates confronting students
- He has to accuse people without hard evidence and worries about falsely accusing hardworking students
Fair enough. That last part is genuinely rough.
But then you read the replies and it's like everyone collectively decided nuance was optional.
Team "Just Adapt" showed up in force:
>"If the AI produces a paper indistinguishable from a high quality essay, then the student has, in fact, written that essay."
Bro what? That's like saying if someone else cooked your meal and you served it, you cooked it. The output isn't the point. The learning is.
>"MAKE them use AI. Then grade based on that curve. Not letting them use AI is like making them write the papers in cursive."
Okay but cursive was abandoned because it was obsolete. AI isn't obsolete. It's a shortcut that skips the part where you actually learn to think.
>"Stop worrying about it. Literally stop worrying about it."
Revolutionary. Why didn't he think of that.
Then you've got the "calculator" crowd:
>"At a certain point in math, you're able to use a calculator. No reason to make you manually calculate every aspect of the problem."
Sure. Except a calculator doesn't write your history essay for you. It doesn't fake your voice. It doesn't make your professor wonder if you even exist as a thinker.
And a few people actually said something real:
>"It can put instructors in the awful position in which it's possible to misidentify someone's writing as being AI."
This is the part nobody wants to talk about. False accusations. Real damage. No recourse.
>"I hate being an undergrad among peers who unashamedly use it. Like what the fuck are we here for."
Exactly. If the degree is just a credential and the work is just output, then what's the point?
My honest take:
The professor isn't wrong to be upset. The system is broken. But the "just get over it" crowd isn't entirely wrong either. AI is here. It's not going anywhere. The question isn't whether to ban it or embrace it. The question is what education is even for anymore.
If it's just about producing a final product, then yeah, let the machines do it. If it's about becoming someone who can think, then we've got a real problem.
Anyway. Curious what you all think. Is the professor right to be upset? Are the replies too dismissive? Is take-home work just dead now?