I’ll admit it: I’m getting tired. Tired of pushing against the current of “AI” hype. Tired of explaining that having a chatbot produce answers for you is not education. Tired of explaining that, indeed, taking ideas and words you didn’t make and submitting them as your own work (without attribution) is plagiarism. Tired of arguing that thinking for ourselves and not pursuing cognitive offloading to massive for-profit companies are genuine human goods.

Whatever, I sometimes say. If students want to stifle their own social, intellectual, and, dare I say, spiritual growth and have chatbots do their work, just let them. Like I said, I’m tired. I’m tired of flailing to explain how what I find precious in life is in fact precious. Maybe I’m just being a stick-in-the-techno-progress-myth mud. But then I see what some students submitted as their own work this term, academic work that dedicated instructors would have to read and evaluate, and I once again feel like I cannot give up on saying all this.

Why shouldn’t students use a chatbot to do their homework?