The university does not have a campus-wide policy on the use of artificial intelligence, electing to leave the discretion up to each school. That’s left a level of ambiguity to students, professors and administrators on how to implement AI into their educational routine.
Departments like the School of Information have been at the forefront of AI usage at UM, while some professors in the College of Literature, Science and Arts have been much more hesitant to integrate it into their classrooms.
“Because the applications and ethical considerations of AI differ widely across disciplines, faculty determine how these tools serve their research and teaching, reflecting a faculty-first strategy grounded in disciplinary expertise rather than a single university-wide mandate,” university spokesperson Kay Jarvis said.
MLive spoke to more than 10 UM students, professors and employees to gauge the various ways AI is being used at the university.
Michael Spiegel, who serves as the faculty support for AI usage in the School of Engineering and Business, said he expects UM to be near the front of the AI movement, but not on the cutting edge.
“Every school is trying to use AI to try and make their students the most competitive in the job market,” Spiegel said.
'PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE THE CONVENIENCE'
Charlie Van Haaften arrived in Ann Arbor at a disruptive time for his major. Computer science students around the country are struggling to find jobs, as AI has caused technology companies to cut swathes of the work force.
While the future of his field is “concerning,” he said professors at UM have helped ease his worries.
“They don’t sit there and just pretend it doesn’t exist. They say it’s going to change things,” Van Haaften said.
Van Haaften said professors told him they believe AI will be used more as a “tool then a takeover.” But he tries to avoid over-using it in classes.
Dylan Kelleher, a 23‑year‑old graduate student, said he tries not to use AI for “ethical reasons.” He’s watched professors’ attitudes toward ChatGPT shift dramatically — from warning students they could be suspended for using it during his freshman year to allowing it in class projects by the time he started graduate school.
Just like professors, some students are taking advantage of the technology while others are more hesitant.
“It is kind of scary to me, so I’m interested in it for that reason, but some people just seem to like the convenience of it,” Kelleher said. “Some people don’t like it at all and don’t use it at all. It depends.”
Law school student Graham Hardig started the AI Law and Policy Society. He believes AI will be “incredibly transformative” for the legal profession because it could help improve “access to justice” for people who cannot afford legal services. Hardig said the law school has been receptive to his questions about how AI can be implemented into course work.
Jarvis said professors are trying to ensure that graduates can “use these technologies thoughtfully and effectively in a rapidly changing workforce.” UM hosts open seminars and workshops hosted by our Center for Research on Learning and Teaching and Center for Academic Innovation to try and help students understand AI’s role.
“I do worry sometimes that people are overly fearing it, even though, again ... I think the fears are worth taking seriously. We just gotta have a balance between ... recent fear and optimism,” Hardig said.
HOW PROFESSORS ARE USING AI
Several professors said departments in the humanities, computer science and some older majors have raised concerns about AI use, while the schools of information, business and economics have generally embraced it.
Cliff Lampe, associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information, said instructors should assume that “for any writing assignment, your students are going to use generative AI.”
Even so, most professors acknowledge that AI is becoming a critical part of modern education. Van Haaften said his English professors encourage students to use AI for outlining and idea generation. A professor from the College of LSA was not made available.
“It does differ on the department. Some are like ‘we don’t want you to use it at all, because we’ll have you use it in the future.’ But all departments seem to acknowledge it in some way or another,” Van Haaften said.
Lampe estimated that 75 percent of professors in the School of Information are “heavily using” AI. The school has launched AI-centered classes, including a new minor called “Human Centered AI.” Christopher Brooks, who teaches several of those classes, said those courses are always in “high demand.”
Professors are using the technology in a multitude of ways. For example, instructors could find a cluster of short-response answers that are similar and group it together to grade. Lampe said faculty could even feed students’ work into an AI model to generate personalized homework assignments.
At the Ross School of Business, students can now deliver up to 10 sales pitches each semester to an AI audience — far more than the single in‑person presentation they typically give to a human evaluator. Students are going to be able build software that books flights, helps plan family vacations, etc. within the next year, Spiegel said.
“This is going to be the year of disposable software,” Spiegel said.
But professors also worry about the broader implications of AI on the academic job market. As AI reshapes various fields, professors worry it could lead to fewer students choosing their majors — and ultimately fewer faculty positions.
Spiegel said, “everyone should think about how AI could potentially replace or change their jobs.” In the next negotiation, professors could potentially try to include language that AI can’t replace a professor for a scale of classes
Lampe and Brooks said they doesn’t expect AI to directly replace faculty jobs but hopes it will free professors to focus more on building relationships with students. Lampe’s concerns lie more in how the technology could, at times, work against that goal.
“The concern is students are using AI to do their homework and then professors use AI to grade that homework. It just ends up being machines talking to each other,” Lampe said.
While there haven’t been any reported cases of professors abusing AI, some students worry it could happen in the future. Kelleher said he’d be “taken aback” if professors were creating homework with AI.
“Sometimes I see students who are frustrated that they maybe aren’t to be using Gen AI in the class, but that their instructors are using Gen AI,” Brooks said.
Brooks said the technology is evolving so quickly that he can’t predict how deeply it will be integrated into higher education in the near future. He hopes AI will help make professors more effective without diminishing their value in the workforce.
“As a professor, we’re not to be putting in eight hours a day creating content. That’s not the job. The job is we have to teach a compelling class,” Brooks said. “If we could do AI to help solve our part of our job or make us even better at that job, that’s a net win.”
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