Thursday, August 6, 2026

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Generative AI: We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect - Carla Fehr and Jennifer Saul, Inside Higher Ed

 When Carla explained the assignment, the first question raised was “What if we don’t want to use GenAI?” At first, she responded that it was part of the assignment and that whether or not they wanted to use generative AI, they should at least know how to use it. If they then chose to reject it, they could do so from a place of knowledge and experience. The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced in response to prompting; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings and complex ideas; they wanted to work together across their human differences to negotiate new ideas and find ways of expressing them. And they didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to generative AI. They wanted to do the work, even the mundane work.