To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain; Ars Technica, April 13, 2026

SCOTT K. JOHNSON , Ars Technica; To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain

"Let me explain why students are the ones losing the most in this environment and why instructors like me feel pretty much powerless to fix the problem.

Do or do not, there is no AI

Students often carry misconceptions about coursework. They may view an instructor as an opponent standing in the way of the grade they want. And they see “getting the right answers” as the goal of education because that’s how you secure that grade.

But that’s no more true than thinking that logging a count of reps is the goal of bodybuilding. The hard work of lifting weights is the point because that yields physical results. A popular analogy is that using an LLM to write your essay is like driving a forklift into the weight room. Weights get lifted, sure, but nothing is accomplished. I’m not hoping you can answer the exam question for me—I don’t need your essay to get me out of a jam. The process of doing the work was what you needed to walk away with something.

In a recent video about how easy Sora has made it for users to generate relatively realistic but deeply problematic videos, Hank Green rubbed his eyes as he shouted in the figurative direction of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, “The friction matters, Sam!”...

I’m not alone in feeling exasperated by this predicament. A survey of about 3,000 college faculty showed that 85 percent felt LLMs “make students less likely to develop critical thinking abilities,” and 72 percent reported challenges managing LLM use.

Predictably, the response from higher education administrators―who are busy signing contracts for institutional LLM subscriptions to show how future-first their thought leadership is―has been to tell instructors that their job is to teach students “how to use AI effectively.”...

A few months ago, I overheard some college students talking about their classes. One was complaining about an assignment they needed to do that night, and another incredulously asked why they wouldn’t just have ChatGPT do it. The first replied, “This is my major, I actually need to learn stuff in this class. I use AI for my other classes.”"