Exclusive | Californias top professors reveal how AI has revolutionized classes, massive pitfalls: Shoving it down our throats

Artificial intelligence has turned college classrooms upside down, and some of California’s most prominent professors are fighting back with a decidedly old-school weapon: paper.The California Post spoke to professors from UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley and Stanford about how AI is affecting their classes.Some said they were cutting it out altogether and only properly grading written work done in class without tech.

Others said they were using it to their advantage and saw it as a positive force in their lessons.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story “The technology has been shoved down all our throats and we’re all just dealing with the fallout,” Morgan Polikoff, professor of education at USC Rossier told the Post.Polikoff, who is on leave from teaching, said he had already planned to switch more of his graded undergraduate assignments to sit-down, paper-and-pencil tests.He said he’d likely adopt a policy similar to that of renowned UC Berkeley math professor Richard Borcherds, who made headlines for no longer grading homework for correctness.Two years ago, Polikoff caught a freshman writing a paper with AI after he had banned it.

He said it was easy to spot, and the student owned up when confronted.Polikoff made him rewrite the paper from scratch.“I think in general we will need more standardized and AI-proof measures of everything, both in college admissions and once students are enrolled at university,” he said.

“It’s become increasingly difficult to know what anyone knows and can do, and that signal is important.”“I don’t see any point at all in a student completing an assessment by running it through AI and handing in to me whatever it spit out for them—that is a waste of my time and theirs,” he added.USC leaves AI rules up to individual...