A few days ago, a professor posted their AI policy on social media, and the policy was just "no AI." No nuance, no consideration that using AI is already a valuable skill and will only be more valuable in the future, just...no AI. OK, then.
This is, of course, an absurd take lacking in all nuance, and will age about as well as those old "no using Wikipedia as a primary source" rules I had to deal with years ago. There's a vast gulf between feeding an essay topic into ChatGPT and copying and pasting it into a doc (that's unethical, but also very easy to spot on any close read) and using AI for research, generating topic ideas, or spelling and grammar checks. Is it ethical to use an AI-powered virtual human to practice before a presentation or to brush up on foreign language skills? What about using Midjourney to generate illustrations in a report, instead of pulling stock photos from the web?
The rule is not only silly and impossible to enforce meaningfully, it also does students a massive disservice, as using AI is going to be a critical skill for the next generation of workers. Using new technology to augment work, alongside critical thinking and analysis skills, are the skillsets the future workforce needs to have -- and students who don't have access to that will be far behind their peers that do.
In the next few years, we'll finally reach the end of "teaching to the test," a concept meant to promote equity but which in fact has sucked the joy and creativity out of learning. This is going to require a massive shakeup in the way we teach kids, as they'll be required to practice social/emotional skills (machines are not yet smart enough for those) and higher level thinking and analysis, and simply memorizing rote formulas won't be enough. It will require more work, sure, but will lead to far better outcomes.
Every generation, a new technology comes along and educators freak out, then cautiously accept it, then embrace it. Rather than going through this whole ridiculous cycle again, we need to start talking about reasonable use cases for AI at every grade level, and then introducing concepts to students. Their future economic prospects depend on it.