In T. H. White's imaginative fantasy of the youth of King Arthur, The Once and Future King, the magician Merlin transforms Arthur into a variety of animals in order to teach him the virtues he will need in human society. One of the most chilling transformations comes about when Merlin launches him into an ant colony. Suddenly Arthur can hear the constant drone of instructions from on high, and read the ever-present propaganda posters that tell him how regimented the lives of ants are. One particular sign encapsulates the essence of totalitarianism that leaves no room for free will: "Everything Not Forbidden Is Compulsory."
Over the past year I have observed how artificial-intelligence propaganda, if you want to call it that, has pervaded the workplace and, after the usual delay, has washed up on the shores of academia. At the beginning of the fall semester, just before classes began, I received an invitation to a two-day AI seminar in which a new faculty member would be conducting exercises in how to create a website with AI, how to use it in research and administrative tasks, and more. Besides invitations from our school director, I received an email directly from the person conducting the seminar the day before it began. I'm sure he did a good job with the seminar, although I wasn't able to attend it due to some prior travel I'd planned. But my confidence in the project was not increased when I noted that in the email from the seminar leader, he had misspelled the word "tomorrow." Either he didn't take his own advice and skipped letting AI check his emails, or the AI system thought he was trying to be funny.
It is becoming increasingly clear that anybody in a business that could be described in George Gilder's phrase as symbolic manipulation—and that definitely includes academics—will soon be effectively forced to use AI for any substantial workflow processes. The reason is simple. If people who use AI begin producing at a rate that equals what three or four or ten people can do unaided by AI, those who refrain from boosting their output with AI will begin to look like slackers. If competition is a factor in keeping one's job, as it always is for untenured faculty and continues in some form after tenure, using AI in a way that boosts your output will soon be necessary.
I'm in a peculiar position in that a year ago, I began what is called phased retirement, in which I work half-time for three years with an option to continue after that. The one course I teach involves a hands-on lab course. Until they bring me an AI robot that can help students figure out what is wrong with a circuit they built, I don't see how AI is going to be of much direct help in the lab.
I'm not an AI Luddite. A few months ago I bought a subscription to Claude and got it to do a few things. It was an interesting experience, and probably saved me some time compared to how long the tasks would have taken without it. But there's a learning curve involved in writing effective AI prompts, and I would probably have to use it every day to get good enough at it to be able to say my net productivity had increased. From what I understand, Claude is now free to faculty members on request, so I'll probably let my subscription lapse. But I'm still not sure what I'll do with it.
The application of the ant-colony slogan to this situation is fairly obvious. The much-abused concept of academic freedom includes the right (privilege?) of deciding what methods and approaches I will use in teaching my class. If I am strongly urged, through peer pressure and cheerleading emails, to use AI in teaching, my freedom isn't breached, exactly, but neither is it enhanced. Nobody has ordered me to start using AI, so my university is very far from an ant colony, although an observer during the break between classes might be forgiven for likening the campus to what happens when you kick over an ant bed.
I'm old enough to remember the transition from the secretarial pool where you took your hand-written report to be typed up, to the word processor programs we were given on our new computer terminals and told to use for reports from now on. There was some grumbling among the older staff, and I remember one professor who agreed to start using the word processor, but insisted on retaining his secretary to deal with all his emails. Both he and the secretary have presumably retired by now. It was an annoying transition for a few years, and produced a lot of badly spelled and composed memos before spell-check programs were added. But now, personal secretaries are like personal jets, reserved only for members of the very highest reaches of an organization, and everybody else makes do with their own hands on the keyboard.
Besides, even without meaning to use AI, I've started using it by simply doing the same kinds of things I've done for a while, such as consulting Google. It now defaults to AI mode, and you have to positively turn it off if you don't want the AI summary as a response to your inquiry. As an example, I was pretty sure that the forbidden-compulsory quote was from The Once and Future King, but I asked Google to make sure, as I don't have a copy of the book handy. Google's AI Overview not only confirmed me in my suspicion, but quoted the exact passage, and appended an explanation of the context, "a world completely stripped of individual free thought and personal freedom."
So if I get a poll in a few months—probably AI-generated—asking me how I'm using AI in my teaching, research, or service, I'll be able to check a little box saying in effect, "Yes, Master, I'm using AI." But not necessarily because I want to, or because I think it makes me better at what I do. Simply because as it's no longer forbidden, it's well on the way to becoming compulsory.
Sources: T. H. White's The Once and Future King was published in 1958.
NOTE: Next week, instead of the usual blog, I will publish a reader's poll. I currently receive virtually no feedback of any form from publishing this blog. This poll will be your opportunity to (a) let me know somebody reads the blog and (b) give me suggestions for improvement. So don't be surprised, as you have been warned.
