How AI is Impacting Our Courses

Like all teachers, I've had to deal with AI in recent years. Here are my thoughts:

1. Homeschoolers can (generally) be trusted
According to the horror stories I've read about college and public school students, AI cheating is now the norm at many institutions. Thankfully, Classical Historian students are still (generally) doing their own work. With very few exceptions, AI is not a major issue in my classes. Parents deserve all the credit for raising students with integrity.

2. Therefore, homeschoolers have a huge advantage
In the years to come, an entire generation of students is likely to struggle to solve problems independently. After years of entrusting their assignments to ChatGPT, they won't be able to come to their own conclusions. After all, critical thinking isn't a reflex: it has to be learned.

Employers are already complaining about the poor quality of recent graduates. Expect more of this as AI usage becomes more widespread.

If homeschoolers continue to buck the trend, they will be at a huge advantage. Critical thinking skills are already in high demand, and they're getting scarce. That would indicate that the students who can think for themselves will be the new elite. 

3. Google AI is terrible for students
Google used to be a gateway to the internet. Now, after sinking billions of dollars into AI, it's trying to get people to stay on google.com by summarizing top results from a number of pages. This is terrible for students.

Google's AI summaries regularly take really complicated issues, like the fall of Rome, and boil them down to 3 or 4 bullet points. As a result, students often get the sense that if they understand 3 or 4 bullet points, they understand the fall of Rome. 

This is a disaster, and only students with the integrity to put a bit more effort in will avoid it. 

But, it's not all bad news. In fact --

4. Thoughtful AI usage is welcome
While these tools aren't to be trusted wholeheartedly — they literally don't care about being honest and will make up outrageous claims (hallucinate) on a regular basis — they can be useful research aids.

For instance, one of the hardest part of historical research is finding good primary sources. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini can be very good at finding publicly available primary sources. Often, they're much better than Google or DuckDuckGo.

With that in mind, I encourage my students to use AI as a search engine. The important thing is to never copy/paste material from the AI chat into your assignment. I have had AI make up quotes out of thin air on me. 

​But asking an AI chatbot a question like, "What are good primary sources on the fall of the Roman Empire?" can get you a lot of really interesting sources in a few seconds.

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So with all that being said, this is a fascinating time to be a homeschool teacher. The arrival of generative AI has only heightened my appreciation for home education — but I am a bit nervous about what comes next.