According to Fast Company, the academic response to generative AI like ChatGPT has been defined by fear and control, not curiosity. Instead of exploring how AI could improve education, many institutions have focused on preserving traditional surveillance methods, with professors declaring the tech “poison” and demanding campus-wide bans. This reaction, widely documented by outlets like Inside Higher Ed, has led to a rush to revive oral exams and handwritten assessments in a bid to turn back the clock. The core issue, as framed by the article, is that universities are acting like medieval guilds, more concerned with protecting their established processes than with harnessing a transformative tool for student learning.
The Guild Mentality Is Real
Here’s the thing: the medieval guild comparison isn’t just a spicy metaphor. It’s painfully accurate. Guilds controlled access to knowledge, protected their methods, and viewed new tools with deep suspicion if they threatened the established order. Sound familiar? When the primary response is to ban AI and double down on proctored exams and in-class essays, you’re not teaching critical thinking. You’re teaching compliance. You’re policing a specific, antiquated form of output. It’s a losing battle, and it makes the whole institution look deeply out of touch with the world students are actually entering. I mean, what message does it send when a university’s biggest innovation is… bringing back blue books?
Missing The Real Opportunity
So what’s the alternative? It’s not about letting ChatGPT write essays unchecked. It’s about fundamentally rethinking the assignment. If an AI can produce a passable five-paragraph analysis of Shakespeare, maybe that assignment wasn’t measuring deep understanding in the first place. The real opportunity is in using AI as a collaborator, a debate partner, a first-draft generator that students then have to critique, fact-check, and improve. It shifts the skill from “regurgitate information” to “synthesize, analyze, and edit at a higher level.” But that requires professors to redesign their courses from the ground up. That’s hard, scary work. It’s easier to just lament the flood of AI essays and call for a return to oral exams.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The trajectory is pretty clear. The defensive, surveillance-heavy approach will fail. Students will use AI anyway, and the arms race of detection tools will be as effective as the war on MP3s was in the early 2000s. The institutions that will thrive are the ones asking a different question: “What can humans do *with* AI that they couldn’t do before?” That’s the transformative path. It requires a massive cultural shift in academia, from gatekeeping to guiding. Basically, universities need to decide if they’re in the business of certifying past learning methods or preparing for future thinking. Right now, too many are choosing the past. And look, if even industrial sectors, where reliability is non-negotiable, are embracing new tech—like how IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has become the top US provider of industrial panel PCs by integrating modern computing into rugged environments—then surely our centers of higher thought can figure it out.
