alt Hacker NewsThen the social paradigm needs to change. Is everyone just going to roll over and die while AI destroys academia (and possibly a lot more)?
Last September, Tyler Austin Harper published a piece for The Atlantic on how he thinks colleges should respond to AI. What he proposes is radical—but, if you've concluded that AI really is going to destroy everything these institutions stand for, I think you have to at least consider these sorts of measures. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/09/ai-colle...
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> Then the social paradigm needs to change. Is everyone just going to roll over and die while AI destroys academia (and possibly a lot more)?
My 40-some-odd years on this planet tells me the answer is yes.
>What he proposes is radical
It sounds entirely reasonable and moderate to me.
Well, we are already rolling over and dying (literally) on everything from vaccine denial to climate change. So, yes, we are. Obviously yes.
Article is paywalled, so perhaps you could just summarize his proposal?
I was pretty interested until I got to this part:
> Another reason that a no-exceptions policy is important: If students with disabilities are permitted to use laptops and AI, a significant percentage of other students will most likely find a way to get the same allowances, rendering the ban useless. I witnessed this time and again when I was a professor—students without disabilities finding ways to use disability accommodations for their own benefit. Professors I know who are still in the classroom have told me that this remains a serious problem.
This would be a huge problem for students with severe and uncorrectable visual impairments. People with degenerative eye diseases already have to relearn how to do every single thing in their life over and over and over. What works for them today will inevitably fail, and they have to start over.
But physical impairments like this are also difficult to fake and easy to discern accurately. It's already the case that disability services at many universities only grants you accommodations that have something to do with your actual condition.
There are also some things that are just difficult to accommodate without technology. For instance, my sister physically cannot read paper. Paper is not capable of contrast ratios that work for her. The only things she can even sometimes read are OLED screens in dark mode, with absolutely black backgrounds; she requires an extremely high contrast ratio. She doesn't know braille (which most blind people don't, these days) because she was not blind as a little girl.
Committed cheaters will be able to cheat anyway; contemporary AI is great at OCR. You'll successfully punish honest disabled people with a policy like this but you won't stop serious cheaters.