Below, Prof. Tristan G. Brown explains why the content and structure of the course requires intellectual effort that can’t be replicated or circumvented with the use of generative AI.
I am less concerned about students using AI than about students outsourcing thinking. Historical reasoning involves judgment, interpretation, and contextualization. AI can summarize information, but it cannot replace the intellectual work of deciding what evidence matters and why.
At its core, this is an exam-based class, and that shapes my approach to generative AI. The midterm and final are designed to test whether students can think historically with unfamiliar material. I deliberately include passages they have never seen before, so they must infer meaning, authorship, and context on the spot by drawing on their honed historical training. That is exactly the kind of work AI or rote memorization cannot do for them.
