I will admit it. When a tedious assignment stands between me and bedtime, I feel the temptation to open up ClaudeAI. It is so easy to let AI summarize everything I need to know in a few succinct bullet points filled with words like “delve” and “streamline.” Hours of work could be condensed into minutes. AI is the epitome of convenience, and that is precisely the reason it does not belong in higher education.
And yes, I could harp on the environmental implications of AI, but I will avoid this for two reasons. First, such implications are difficult to pinpoint and are subject to change. Second, I want to steer clear of blaming everyday citizens for the actions of large tech corporations. Instead, I will make the argument that professors should not use AI because they are meant to set an example, and AI is unoriginal and does not adequately prepare students for the workforce.
Because it is incredibly convenient to use, AI promotes laziness, which has no place at Tufts, especially from professors. Although professors could easily use AI to save time by generating discussion questions and practice problems, it is their responsibility to exercise the same creativity and diligence expected from students. At an institution like Tufts that is meant to train the current generation’s brightest minds, using AI for instruction is taking the easy route and therefore stunting innovation. If professors use a shortcut, how can students be expected to take the honorable route?
Professors should set an example and show students that it is still possible to educate and learn without AI. If Tufts were to allow and even encourage professors to use AI for classroom instruction and grading, students would take that as a signal that their professors do not care enough to take the time to do it themselves. This perceived apathy would likely cause students to put in less effort and use AI for their work. At that point, education devolves into a transaction between robots where AI both teaches and takes classes, cutting out human effort entirely.
Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and ClaudeAI are trained on man-made work. Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology describes the training process for LLMs as “[recognizing] patterns in enormous quantities of text data.” LLMs essentially scrap together centuries of human-generated text and spit out the overall consensus. Therefore, AI is not producing anything new or original. A Tufts education is meant to prepare students to go out into the world and change it, whether it is by coming up with new policy solutions, discovering new medical techniques, or otherwise being visionaries for the future. However, an AI-infested education means giving into a homogenous society where the only opinion is the overall consensus. Therefore, professors should not use AI for classroom instruction because they should encourage students to think beyond the consensus. There is more than one opinion to be had.
Recently, it seems that companies are pushing AI on consumers in a similar way that protein products seem to be popping up everywhere. From the automatic AI Overview that accompanies Google searches to fake home security camera videos on TikTok, AI is impossible to avoid. Many believe the workplace is no exception.
In June 2025, the Ohio State University announced its “AI Fluency Initiative,” which intends to prepare students to “not just keep up, but lead in this workforce of the future.” The initiative claims to support professors in integrating AI tools into their classrooms. The change comes at a time when many researchers, like economist Anton Korinek, predict AI will “replace large swaths of human labor.” However, the hope that fluency in AI tools is an advantage is a massive misstep.
Professors surrendering to the slop will only make students more vulnerable to an AI takeover. In a 2026 interview with ABC News, co-founder and president of Anthropic—the company that developed Claude—Daniela Amodei said that “there are things that make us uniquely human—understanding ourselves, understanding history, understanding what makes us tick—I think that will always be really, really important.” Instead of centering AI tools, professors need to promote skills like effective communication and critical thinking so that students can resist being replaced by AI. Therefore, supporting professors in offloading their work onto AI is setting up students for failure.
If students want to learn from AI-generated bullet-point summaries, they could stay at home. People from around the world come to Tufts, some taking on student loans and working part-time jobs, and most working exceptionally hard just to earn their acceptance. A record number of prospective students applied to Tufts for the incoming class of 2030, in large part because they believe in the admissions and hiring systems that make up a Tufts classroom. It is up to the professors to be AI-resistant because it is the people, not the machines, that make Tufts a valuable place to learn.
Artwork by Caroline Choi