Along with seeking $24.5 million to saddle faculty, staff, and students with artificial intelligence, the South Dakota Board of Regents has adopted a new policy directing its institutions and inmates to “apply ethical use” of AI “in a manner that aligns with the goals and mission of the Regental system and the institution, as well as the academic discipline.” New Policy 7.9 directs faculty specifically to put “course-specific expectations around the use of AI” in their syllabi.
The Regents’ strategic plan does say something about the goal of “student success” and “quality educational experience”, so the most ethical and mission-aligned AI-expectations profs could syllabize for their students would be, “Don’t be stupid: don’t use AI“:
An MIT study published earlier this year found that students who used AI to help write an essay showed lower brain activity compared to the students who didn’t. Alarmingly, the AI group struggled to quote their own essays, and when they were later asked to write a paper without AI help, their brain activity stayed at a reduced level. Mirroring those findings, other studies have showed that AI impairs critical thinking and have associated it with memory loss [Frank Landymore, “The Results of Middle and High School Students Using AI Are Extremely Ominous,” Futurism, 2026.08.22].
If our universities are committed to building brain power, the Regents need to spend some of their $24.5M on signal blockers, chatbot filters… and extra blue books and pencils.
The obvious use of AI is to apply it to low-level repetitive activity and use your own brain to vet its output, verify its accuracy and lack of delusion, and then do personal edits and revisions to punch up and personalize the final product.
If your prompt (command) includes the data set to use, the intended audience and the voice to compose with, AI will use its massive organizational skills and large-language-model skills to do a good initial framework to then add human input to.
Lawyers who have used AI to prepare legal documents which end up containing delusion, or use AI like a search engine and disregard the potential fabricated data which does occur, then they have used it wrong.
It still takes hard human work to do research papers, but AI should be a tool to help you make them bigger and better by doing the boring grunt work, and not be regarded as a replacement for human effort.
We have larger problems with AI related to controlling data access and confidential treatment of copyright and proprietary data. We also have problems with understanding the basic nature of AI itself in terms of fully understanding how it does what it does. It is right to be more cautious about rushing to add AI everywhere in colleges and workplaces, and making sure the right guardrails are in place.
Mr. H is right to question this science fictional future the Regental Board is pushing at us. grudznick is being picked up for second breakfasting and will chat about the GPTs and such over gravy taters and prime rib to see what others think.
Bored of Regents….
When Mrs. Johnson was on the Regental Board they’d have never gotten away with this kind of pie in the sky day dreaming.
At least the Regents have a forward-thinking proposal that will reduce your flatulent “brain drain”.
It is SD’s biggest problem, you know.
AI’s purpose is to replace the work done by people. That replacement also includes replacing the learning required or gained in that work. This replacement is the anthesis of higher learning.
We faced a similar mandate at the HS level; in the English department, we could not find ANY appropriate use of AI. All use is detrimental, even antithetical, to learning.
So the BOR needs to ask themselves if student are there to learn or just complete tasks.
Jeez, if I’d have had AI, I would have gone to the bar had a few games of pool and had AI do all my reports. A few games of pool always clears the mind.
Sorry, O. Saying “AI’s purpose is to replace human work” is like saying “books exist to replace teachers.”
It’s a categorical error. Many English departments have found appropriate uses for AI from teaching plagiarism to multimodal composition. Top tier instructors teach students how to use it as a cognitive amplifier, not a shortcut. Lower tier instructors just complain and cry BEFORE they’re hurt
You see, O, AI doesn’t HAVE a purpose. Humans give it a purpose from automating tasks to generating drafts to simulating scenarios.
And Cory. One MIT article doesn’t generalize research, outlining, revision, and problem solving. But keep trying.
Mr. Lansing, when your GPT chat bots can whip up a greasy spoon pork chop as well as the human short order cook can, then you have something.
Earth haters like grud use AI to drill into He Sapa looking for uranium, neodymium and worse so whatever comes out of its mealy mouth is pure praseodymium.
Republican is simply another word for Trumplican, right grud?
Andro, what is the “boring grunt work” of research papers that we can reasonably and safely turn over to bots that won’t lead to flabby student brains? What good can be done beyond advanced search engine features that gather the primary sources students need to analyze and synthesize themselves?
One MIT article, plus one Stockholm/Hong Kong study of 12,000 kids, plus two other studies linked by Landymore from Carnegie Mellon/Microsoft and Pakistan… I’m up at least four over the zero studies I’ve seen presented in this conversation showing that AI makes human brains stronger.
O is entirely correct to say that AI’s purpose is to replace human work. Analogizing to the imagined statement “Books exist to replace teachers” is incorrect because (1) books are human work, produced by “teachers” who write their knowledge and images and questions and pedagogical tactics down and transmit them to students by an alternate medium and (2) books don’t “offload cognitive tasks central to who we are as humans, such as critical thinking, judgment, and creativity.”
Books don’t make their users lazier or dumber. Books inherently require cognitive effort.
I get a kick out of the technological bamboozlers and their predictions of what is going to happen when some nascent technology gets fully steamrolled onto the public. It never turns out anything like the rosy scenario they paint.
I give you the smart phone as an exhibit. In 2000 the technological bamboozlers were touting the technology dream of that era: the smart phone. As a school board member I got to go to a conference where we were told the smart phone would revolutionize education. I even remember this quote: “In five years students will hold a computer in their hands! How will that change education?”
Today we are banning that technology from the classroom because it seems it did change education—for the worse, apparently.
Cory. AI doesn’t make a learner anymore “flabby brained” than the grammar app you use on DFP to correct commentors. Kinda makes you a hypocrite, buddy. That app if AI.
Question to AI?
Approximately how many top tier articles positively promote AI as a boon to the future?
AI answer:
Across the top‑tier sources returned in your query hundreds of major, high‑credibility articles explicitly frame AI as a positive force for the future — meaning they emphasize AI’s benefits, transformative potential, or constructive societal impact.
Based on the search results:
– MIT Sloan – “Top 10 Ideas Made to Matter articles of 2025”
Nine of ten articles highlight AI improving work, productivity, economic growth, sustainable computing, and human–AI collaboration.
These are overwhelmingly positive in tone and future‑oriented.
– Harvard Innovation Labs – “AI POWERED INNOVATION”
Profiles 10 ventures using AI to improve healthcare, education, robotics, climate tech and accessibility.
Strongly positive, emphasizing AI expanding what’s possible across industries. – Harvard Innovation Labs
Cory. There are many more positive articles than negative about AI. Don’t try to compete with the flow. You better get on the train or your job is history! Same with all teachers and office workers.
grudznick: You better get down on your knees every morning and thank GOD for Artificial Intelligence in the medical field. The crap you eat will soon put you in heart surgery and your fatty liver will put you on dialysis.
And there’s an interesting irony in Cory’s argument: books actually provide a pretty good counterexample to his analogy. Humanity has spent thousands of years developing tech that extends cognition (writing, books, calculators, computers, spreadsheets). AI is different not because it is the first tech to “offload” cognition, but because it can offload increasingly high-level, open-ended cognitive work.
The Distinction:
A book transmits human cognition to another human. AI can perform cognition on the human’s behalf.
That’s the part Cory misses by a bunch.
Mr. Lansing, 50% of new articles online are created by AI itself, so that doesn’t tell us much. Cory, gave out studies, not articles. He’s still up 4-0.
Concern, not necessarily panic, over AI crosses all ideologies, classes, ethnicities, age groups, you name it (including the CEOs who have to keep going full steam ahead because of under-regulated capitalism).
Side note: Per the article I linked to the other day, AI agents are now capable of masquerading as multiple users who can argue in AI’s defense.
RE: AI – I’ve done initial workplace training on uses of AI, guardrails on proprietary data, etc.
A relative of mine who is a college instructor, and also working as a writer of direct marketing materials, has spent a few years working with AI. Academically, he can feed it data sets for reports, and use a few rounds of prompting to shape it to his needs. But he gathers and curates the data, it isn’t handed to him. On the marketing front, he has an employer toying with using trained AI to do all the marketing work, ala “replacement” and that goes far less swimmingly. AI is best as a tool to be used, not as a unique robotic workforce replacement.
Gruntwork was used by me somewhat in error.
Mr. Ben: I find your AI knowledge to be of a fearful and very limited nature.
That said, please prove your opening statement/paragraph with links.
Or admit that you’re submitting opinions for my critique.
Or pick a cheek – bend over and kiss my ass!
PS … @Ben – That’s pretty scary that AI can compose text, now. That’s kinda old business. But tell us, Ben. What legitimate publisher is printing these AI self congratulatory essays? Are you reading Hillsdale, again? lol 😂
https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/6008/articles-written-by-ai-study
I didn’t say AI has written 50% of self-congratulatory articles. I said 50% of new articles are written by AI. However, the fact that AI can pose as multiple users in defending itself makes me question the validity of the sheer number of pro-AI arricles (whether created by an agent or put forth by companies seeking profit).
Would you say the “Grandfather of AI” has limited knowledge?
https://youtu.be/jrK3PsD3APk?is=-D_PV9RBhi45vTSZ
PS: Still waiting on some academic studies to back up any of your claims.
Keep waiting, Cabron. The future is now and SD is still fifteen years behind America.
Porter, thank you for the engagement.
First, I have to stand by my position that all automation – even intellectual automation is to replace the human effort. Certainly AI has a place to that offloading, but I still contend that is not appropriate in education: the place where developing new skill and depth of thought is paramount. AI ( and yes, I am focused on large language models) cannot generate new thought; it will only serve up what others have done.
Second, when you say English departments have found a place for AI – especially in the area of plagiarism – you undermine our argument to AI’s value. AI is plagiarism.
Third, books do/did not replace teachers. They do supplement information any specific teacher may not cover. Books have authors. Books are the catalogue of human ideas. AI only steals without credit and in most applications, only deals with surface-level understanding. AI reduces great thought into bumper stickers. AI is theft.
AI has a place in the workplace – as does all automation does IF the goal is “efficiency.” I challenge the assumption that efficiency is the mankind’s highest goal
Introducing and accepting AI in academics only fosters a codependency that limits the individual’s opportunity to expand their and humanity’s understanding.
Mr. Lansing, I used to think your engagement on this issue was at least in good faith. I stand corrected. You have no serious arguments to make, just cheerleading and insults.
Donald, as a teacher I also heard the bright future of smartphones. Even as a 1 to 1 laptop school, I was always amused by how many students would go straight to their phones to look something up — Evan as their laptop laid open in front of them.
Smartphones showed that we are still a society of have and have-nots. As incredible as it seems, some students, by parent choice or from economics, do not have smartphones
What none of us (at least in education) saw was that putting the information of the whole world in the palms of students would be the least tempting thing to do with that phone. Addictive screen goblins came in quickly. I still think of where we would be as a society if those students and smartphones were dedicated to learning — as we hoped; as we were promised.
Court Martial is the twentieth episode of Star Trek: The Original Series season one. The episode is iconic among fans for introducing Kirk’s eccentric defense attorney, Samuel T. Cogley (played by Elisha Cook Jr.). Cogley famously rejects the 23rd-century reliance on computers and data screens, filling his entire office with thousands of physical, printed books.
“Homeric hymns, the root metaphor for are own civilization. Thank you, Number One.”