Opinion: We're losing the plot on AI in universities

A filepic of a student of Texas Robotics showing an AI brain-computer interface allowing him to control his hand with his thoughts, during a press conference in Geneva on. The Singapore saga shows how everyone is on edge, and whether a reference-sorting website even counts as a generative AI tool isn’t clear. — Getty Images/TNS

An artificial intelligence furor that’s consuming Singapore’s academic community reveals how we’ve lost the plot over the role the hyped-up technology should play in higher education.

A student at Nanyang Technological University said in a Reddit post that she used a digital tool to alphabetise her citations for a term paper. When it was flagged for typos, she was then accused of breaking the rules over the use of generative AI for the assignment. It snowballed when two more students came forward with similar complaints, one alleging that she was penalised for using ChatGPT to help with initial research, even though she says she did not use the bot to draft the essay.

The school, which publicly states it embraces AI for learning, initially defended its zero-tolerance stance in this case in statements to local media. But Internet users rallied around the original Reddit poster, and rejoiced at an update that she won an appeal to rid her transcript of the academic fraud label.

It may sound like a run-of-the-mill university dispute. But there’s a reason the saga went so viral, garnering thousands of upvotes and heated opinions from online commentators. It laid bare the strange new world we’ve found ourselves in, as students and faculty are rushing to keep pace with how AI should or shouldn’t be used in universities.

It's a global conundrum, but the debate has especially roiled Asia. Stereotypes of math nerds and tiger moms aside, a rigorous focus on tertiary studies is often credited for the region’s economic rise. The importance of education – and long hours of studying – is instilled from the earliest age. So how does this change in the AI era? The reality is that nobody has the answer yet.

Despite the promises from edtech leaders that we’re on the cusp of “the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” the data on academic outcomes hasn’t kept pace with the technology’s adoption. There are no long-term studies on how AI tools impact learning and cognitive functions – and viral headlines that it could make us lazy and dumb only add to the anxiety. Meanwhile, the race to not be left behind in implementing the technology risks turning an entire generation of developing minds into guinea pigs.

For educators navigating this moment, the answer is not to turn a blind eye. Even if some teachers discourage the use of AI, it has become almost unavoidable for scholars doing research in the internet age. Most Google searches now lead with automated summaries. Scrolling through these should not count as academic dishonesty. An informal survey of 500 Singaporean students from secondary school through university conducted by a local news outlet this year found that 84% were using products like ChatGPT for homework on a weekly basis.

In China, many universities are turning to AI cheating detectors, even though the technology is imperfect. Some students are reporting on social media that they have to dumb down their writing to pass these tests or shell out cash for such detection tools themselves to ensure they beat them before submitting their papers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The chaotic moment of transition has put new onus on educators to adapt, and shift the focus on the learning process as much as the final results, Yeow Meng Chee, the provost and chief academic and innovation officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, tells me. This doesn’t mean villainizing AI, but treating it as a tool, and ensuring a student understands how they arrived at their final conclusion even if they used technology. This process also helps ensure the AI outputs, which remain imperfect and prone to hallucinations (or typos), are checked and understood.

Ultimately, professors who make the biggest difference aren’t those who improve exam scores but who build trust, teach empathy and instill confidence in students to solve complex problems. The most important parts of learning still can’t be optimised by a machine.

The Singapore saga shows how everyone is on edge, and whether a reference-sorting website even counts as a generative AI tool isn’t clear. It also exposed another irony: Saving time on a tedious task would likely be welcomed when the student enters the workforce – if the technology hasn’t already taken her entry-level job. Demand for AI literacy in the labor market is becoming a must-have, and universities ignoring it does a disservice to cohorts entering the real world.

We’re still a few years away from understanding the full impact of AI on teaching and how it can best be used in higher education. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees as we figure it out. – Bloomberg

(Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.)