Policy on AI

Professor Motahar’s Courses

 
 

 

This is from colleagues at the University of Illinois, Chicago: 

“Generative AI cuts out process, but thinking is process.  Shortcuts degrade quality: LLM [Large Language Model] outputs, simulations of training data found on the internet, are inaccurate and often biased.  This technology, heavily promoted by big money, relies on stolen property and exploited laborers, and exacts significant environmental costs.  Evidence is also rolling in that the tools are bad for brain functioning.  All these negative impacts for something that is only, as the sociologist of technology Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom says, “mid.”  Using LLMs makes your work bland, vague, and wrong, and impedes the development of skills.  Building skills as a thinker, reader, and writer equips you for success as a professional, for participation as a citizen, and for fulfillment as a human.  That development only happens with sweat, practice, [poor] first drafts, errors, time, and revision.  Your work in this course should be made by you – not someone you pay and not a bot – and work not made by you will be considered an academic integrity violation and evaluated accordingly.  Similarly, all lectures, assignments, feedback, and grades will be made by me without AI, nor will any of your intellectual property be fed to tools that train AI.  Ideas are social, so let’s make them together.”  [Emphasis added.]
 

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Last revised:  Monday, March 30, 2026