Generative AI (or more accurately the collection of machine learning programs that have been cleverly re-branded as “Artificial Intelligence”) is, depending on who you speak to, the next greatest thing for education, or the worst. Personally, I would place myself more in the latter group rather than the former. This is not some knee-jerk Luddite reaction from someone from the 1900s’, but is instead comes from my concerns as an educator for what is being lost on a reliance on this technology, as well from an ethical perspective when the true cost of AI is taken into account. First off, in a class like BI393, where your job is to learn (and learn from your mistakes), relying on an AI robs you of the human experience of growth and personal development. For me to provide feedback on your work, to help you grow in your abilities this semester, I need to be able to engage with your work, so I can understand how you think and how you write. The process of writing (and coding) is actually the process of thinking. AIs don’t think, but instead use probability to estimate what a likely answer could be. As a result, their “answers” can be biased, or include incorrect “hallucinations”, expressed in a seemingly confident manner (or to be more blunt “bullshit”). How can you improve and grow as a student of biostatistics (or as a person), if what I am reviewing does not represent your true efforts or thoughts? What are we even doing here? In addition to these important pedogeological matters, the technology and resources needed to train, and run AIs consumes vast amount of electricity, water, contributes to the depletion of our planet’s resources and the changes to our planet’s climate. The creation of AI systems has frequently relied upon the unauthorized, unacknowledged, and uncompensated use of other’s labour and intellectual property, and in the exploitation of human labour. Based on all these social, ethical and environmental factors, I strongly discourage you from using generative AI to complete assignments in BI393. However, I am also not interested in engaging in a surveillance system that (often inaccurately) claims to “detect” AI-produced material, as this only creates a hostile dynamic between us. So, if you choose to use AIs to assist you in this class, you must cite its usage. Failing to cite the use of generative AI is academic misconduct.
