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OPINION

College students should be taught by human professors, not AI

At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to undermine a generation’s capacity to read, write and think, we believe that we should keep human faculty in charge of student learning. Students largely agree, as do other educators. But administrators at Miami University do not seem to.

At Miami, where faculty and librarians are negotiating their contracts, AI has become a central sticking point. The Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM), the union representing nearly 800 full-time continuing faculty and librarians, is fighting for reasonable protections, including a stipulation that faculty cannot be replaced by AI. The administration is refusing to agree even to these minimal protections.

The transition to AI education is moving fast at Miami. Not only do many students use it to complete assignments even when forbidden, but the university is requiring that all departments integrate AI into their curricula, starting with 13 departments this fall, despite the benefits of AI for education still being untested.

Learning and teaching are human endeavors

While AI is a groundbreaking and transformational technology, it cannot substitute for the human-centered work of learning and teaching. That is because: 

  • AI substitutes product for process. Real learning means building thinking muscles, and that’s best done with human teachers.
  • AI is not factual. It invents and hallucinates facts, names, citations and quotes. It confidently draws conclusions from insufficient sources and is notoriously biased. 
  • AI is inequitable. Large language models (LLMs) train on data that reflects existing and historical power differences. The result is that local, Indigenous, non-Western, less industrialized and other disenfranchised knowledge producers tend to be excluded. Meanwhile, the sources AI does draw from are obscured so that we are not able to tell what — and who — is left out.
  • As AI, and AI slop is added to Google searches and tools such as Canvas (which Miami faculty are required to use), human learners, librarians and teachers become more important, not less. An informed human perspective is necessary for deciding when, whether and how to apply AI-assisted knowledge. If the teaching/learning ecosystem that fosters human expertise deteriorates, how will students analyze AI-generated information, sort fact from hallucination, screen for bias and, crucially, share critical thinking skills with the next generation?

AI protections are a public good

As American Association of University Professors (AAUP) President Todd Wolfson put it, “Higher education exists to advance human understanding, critical inquiry, and the public good—not to become subordinate to an extractive AI economy that deepens inequality and erodes democratic life.”

We don’t want higher education to contribute to lowering the quality of life in our community, and AI data centers create vast ecological damage and increased inequality. 

The good news is that labor unions and community organizers are successfully fighting for worker protections and against data centers and AI slop. According to a new AFL-CIO poll, more than nine out of 10 US workers support pro-worker policies on AI and see labor unions as the source of the greatest protections from AI. 

We’re seeing unions protect the public interest from AI’s dangers in multiple sectors, from the film industry to journalism. The New York Times News Guild just won contract language that includes no layoffs due to AI and a requirement that AI tools be subject to the Times’ editorial standards. Last month, POLITICO journalists shut down two AI tools that create “slop” in an arbitration win.

Our own affiliate organizations, the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers, have taken public stances against data centers and for human-centered, device-free teaching in the classroom.

Meanwhile, people are increasingly fed up with “Big Tech’s” collusions with the Pentagon, as evidenced by the at least 1.5 million people who have canceled their ChatGPT subscription after it allowed the Department of Defense to deploy its AI tools in classified networks.

Take action

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While AI is a remarkable technology, without humans in the driver’s seat, we’ll see a generation of learners lost to instant push-button thinking. As Melanie Mitchell puts it in The Yale Review, “We humans, like most other biological intelligences, are active seekers of information, not passive predictors … unlike LLMs, we are embodied creatures with a sense of self, a sense of others, and (at least for most of us) a profound caring about the consequences of our actions.”

If you agree and you want to see Miami faculty and librarians remain at the center of student learning, support our union in our push to protect students and the future. Join our letter campaign.

The future is human. And it depends on you. 

kulbagta@miamioh.edu 

albarrej@miamioh.edu 

wagnerc6@miamioh.edu 

Theresa Kulbaga is a professor of English and president of the Faculty Alliance of Miami, AAUP-AFT, Local 375.

Elena Jackson Albarrán is a professor of history and vice president of the Faculty Alliance of Miami.

Cathy Wagner is a professor of English and a lead organizer for the Faculty Alliance of Miami.

At The Student, we are committed to engaging with our audience and listening to feedback. This includes publishing a diverse array of guest editorials. For more information on guidelines and processes, email Taylor Powers, The Student's Opinion editor at powerstj@miamioh.edu 

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