By: DR. BRANDON BATE
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 10 Oct 2025
On Nov. 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. By January 2023, ChatGPT had amassed 100 million active users, making it one of the fastest-growing web services in history. In July of this year, ChatGPT became the most downloaded cell phone application in the world, surpassing TikTok and Instagram in popularity. Within a short time span, artificial intelligence went from an academic curiosity within computer science departments to a force that is changing our relationships with technology and with each other.
While the long-term outcomes of the ongoing “AI revolution” remain unknown, its impact on college education is already being felt. Early iterations of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) produced stylistically distinctive outputs and hallucinated facts and citations. But newer iterations of these AI systems have improved dramatically. The “tells” that once prompted suspicions in professors are now more subtle. According to Professor Dongwon Lee at Penn State University, many claim to be able to distinguish between human and AI-generated content, but experiments show that human performance at this task is only slightly better than blind guessing. Software touted as capable of detecting AI-generated text is also unreliable, with most being only able to do so 60% of the time.
As might be expected, faculty tend to view AI with suspicion if not outright hostility. It’s a hindrance to how we have traditionally taught. Research papers, essays and forum responses are simply too easy to generate with AI. But AI-proof alternatives to these types of assignments are hard to imagine. I don’t see this frustration abating as AI continues its ascendance.
Despite this, many Houghton faculty are intrigued by AI, with some even being described as “AI enthusiasts.” Some have used AI to help write computer programming code for their research projects. Others have used it to generate images for class presentations and other course materials. Some even use it to write initial drafts for email responses and letters. I’ve used AI to generate assignment ideas and debug code, in addition to using it as a glorified, yet fallible, interactive encyclopedia.
In the New York Times article “Professors Face Student Rancor Over Use of A.I.”, Kashmir Hill describes some of the more extreme uses of AI by college professors. Some use it to grade assignments and provide comments. A few have even created course-specific chatbots that provide the same type of feedback one would expect when attending office hours.
Although ethical questions surrounding both student and faculty AI usage linger, this has not stopped tech companies from seeking to monetize AI use in education. Anthropic’s Claude for Education aims to provide professors with AI tools that enable the creation of more engaging content as well as the “automation of tedious tasks.” OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu has similar aspirations with their promise to “bring AI to campus at scale.” Recently, Google has been offering a free year of the Pro version of Gemini to college students, at a $240 value. All that to say, even if you aren’t interested in AI, AI is interested in you.★
