I'm excited to hear some answers about this topic! Educators lead the way :)

Joel, 

I really appreciate the way you’ve articulated this! These tensions are exactly what so many of us are wrestling with right now. I’m right there with you-I cheer for mistakes! :) And, I know that students can manufacter these mistakes too! I am seeking out the real HUMAN and a sense of authenticity!  Over the past several semesters, I’ve built out a variety of authentic assessments that are AI‑resilient assignments, and even with that in place, authorship and genuine student thinking often are a challenge for many students.

The shift from copy‑paste plagiarism to full‑document outsourcing has completely changed how students engage in their learning (and not for the better).  These are challenging times for us as educators, but I share your hope. I’m not anti‑AI either; I just want students to stay intellectually present and not hand over the entire cognitive load. I stress this to my students and try to model through my own use of AI and the learning experiences we engage in. 

Thanks for putting words to what so many of us are navigating.

 First, let me say that I love the concept of students themselves being AI-resilient. A lot of talk has been around AI-resilience of assignments or assessments, which IS important, but refocusing that concept on STUDENTS or any users of AI is very interesting.

It suggests that students/users can themselves learn to cope with the impacts of AI, and I think that could be a whole discussion in itself! In fact, that implication that students need resilience in the face of AI lines up nicely to some data we've seen that students themselves have fears around the impact of AI on their own learning and on society in general. In 2025, we worked with partners to survey students, educators, and administrators about AI, and 64% of students reported that they are worried about the use of AI in education. Surprisingly, that was higher than either the educator group or the administrator group. 

While I agree with both Joel and Stephanie Speicher that there is so much positive opportunity around using AI, we have to acknowledge that students' fears are legitimate. If misused, AI could do harm. If all the thinking is outsourced to AI, it will harm the learning of students. If AI is used without any validation of its impact, there is valid concern around hallucinations, incorrect information, imprecise understandings, and biases built into the tech. Those are all legitimate things to be concerned about. That's why I think it's so important that educators step into the gap and create opportunities for students to learn how to use AI effectively and ethically. The data suggests that students are hungry for educators to help them figure this out! Knowing whether students used AI or not is important, but knowing HOW they used it is potentially more important. 

No matter how much some might feel nostalgic about the days before AI hit the scene - and I understand the temptation there; it felt easier - those days are in the past. Does that mean that we simply give up and let AI run wild and free, let students use it however they like? No, of course not. It does, though, mean that we understand that now is the time for educators and educational technology to help provide the guardrails around how to use it responsibly, how to mitigate the harms that could happen if students don't learn how to use it effectively and ethically. Both educators and students need a safe space to do that work.