Professor Casey Fiesler
Region: US
Tuesday 25 August 2026 00:03:50 GMT
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theradicalwriter :
I am an honors student. Straight-A's in my major classes. If I see GenAI assignments on the syllabus, I am dropping the class, and if it's a major-required class, I would go to the department head about an independent study. If the AI assignment was not on the syllabus and my professor would not let me do an alternative assignment, I would simply not do the assignment. GenAI is stupid. It makes you stupid. It wouldn't be inevitable if authority figures stopped forcing it down our throats. It is trained on stolen work and destroying rare texts. It is raising utility prices. It is killing our electrical grid. It is actively destroying our environment. I would rather be unemployed than use GenAI and I will actively avoid taking classes with professors who promote its use because—from my perspective—there is nothing such a person can teach me.
2026-08-26 12:47:09
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skychica800 :
I learned to write painstakingly before chat-GPT. I benefitted immensely from the struggle process. It forced me to build skills I would otherwise not have had to develop. As a student today, my objection would be the loss of a skill-building opportunity rather than a moral objection
2026-08-25 05:32:37
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pauldavidpauldavidpa :
Could students object to using AI because they don't want the intellectual stagnation (and consequent lower grades) that AI causes if you search for the right research?
2026-08-25 02:30:19
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mark_confidant :
I feel like the framing of inevitability (everyone will have to use LLMs) and of neutrality (LLMs are a neutral productivity tool like excel) are super common cliches in the rhetoric of AI boosters. And often it seems like the argument is coming from a form of backwards logic. The speaker wants the LLM abstainer to be wrong, so LLMs must be vital to the current situation and the argument will be framed as though everyone already agreed that’s true.
2026-08-25 02:13:21
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Seb 🍉🐢🏳️⚧️🤜🏿🤛🏻 :
Me, a European, thinking that frog dissections was just a thing in movies to make a point - y'all do that for real? 😳
2026-08-29 10:15:06
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Poison Possum :
I am torn on this … there are a lot of corporate environments where it is not an option to not engage in AI (built into in house softwares where there is no other way to do the task) being competent in it is similar to being competent in excel for some jobs- I don’t like AI, I have ethical qualms with it and don’t use it in my personal life. I am competent in it and use it at work bc it’s part of my job. Maybe I am just too flexible in my ethical standards and am justifying a behavior that doesn’t come with a high personal cost but I would be interested to understand if these students will be willing to pass on future jobs where AI is in some part mandatory to their own economic detriment. The frog analogy makes sense but there are lots of professions where you can easily hold that same ethical standard I fear - whether it right or wrong - it will be harder to exist in a work environment and be a self selection out of future opportunities to refuse to engage with AI
2026-08-28 12:35:36
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Dr D :
this is an odd analogy and borders on straw man. youre not killing something by using AI. and if youre going to make the water argument, that has been blown way out of proportion as there are many things that utilize more water than ai does.
2026-08-25 10:21:43
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The Math Tutor :
If a student objects to a particular classroom tool, but is willing to engage in the learning task with a suitable alternative, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. There is some nuance here, though. If the learning task is to learn how to use ai, then there really isn't any alternative. 🤔 (I just don't think that should be a learning task)
2026-08-25 04:29:27
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Victoria Burke :
I find this comment really interesting because I objected to using MS Word and Excel for most of my school career because I was boycotting Microsoft, and the answer was never “you can’t do that, it’s a tool” it was, “what do you propose instead?” So I would make my alternative proposal, typically making whatever thing in my software of choice and exporting to pdf or csv so that the teacher could open it with whatever software they had.
2026-08-26 03:46:39
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Erik :
this feels like allowing students to abstain from lessons because they dont agree with evolution, or because slavery is focused too much. Or any other right wing objections to educations based on moral grounds. The distinction to argue is whether using AI in the classroom is personally harmful or just merely uncomfortable. In the general sense, without knowing the full context of how its used in a lesson plan, to me it seems only a matter of being uncomfortable. Not a good reason to give exception.
2026-08-25 15:11:57
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milo :
Pencils do not require slavery to exist. In order to be trained, LLMs need people feeding them text and images and identifying the content. However, this is extremely expensive, and companies do not want to do that so they outsource the labor to countries with very lax labor laws, and pay people PENNIES to train their AI. Keep in mind, AI also has to be trained to ID content that it is not allowed to produce (like CSAM or gore) so there are people being paid little to no money to view extremely graphic content.
2026-08-26 03:47:11
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Cheeseburger :
You always hear about them doing it with frogs. Meanwhile, I was in what is considered. One of the most advanced high schools in the nation I took all the normal science classes, not once. Do we dissect frogs.
2026-08-26 05:45:11
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Ask A Neuroscientist🧠🐁 :
I love this analogy, especially because the ethical dissection refusal has a lot of similar arguments for/against it. When I’m teaching anatomy, if a student is refusing to do a dissection the #1 argument I have is “you want to go into the medical field, you will have to cut into someone at some point”. And similarly, the #1 argument I’ve heard for forcing students to use ai is “in your future field, you will have to use AI”. And in both instances, those arguments really complicate our ability to accommodate students who have ethical concerns because we want our students to be prepared, but we also shouldn’t force students to compromise their morals. Maybe it’s just a learning moment for the student that they may not want to go into this field if they have such a strong objection? Idk I don’t have the answers, but my point is that this is a great example
2026-08-25 05:09:18
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DPR Donuts 🆘🇺🇲🏳️🌈 :
the primary difference here is that ai is objectively materially harmful to the student. the only learning objective that requires the use of ai is learning how to use ai. and you don't actually need a teacher for that.
2026-08-25 07:10:13
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Ramesh :
I think objecting to using Excel is pretty plausible because Microsoft is on the BDS list, but it should be relatively easy for them to use a different spreadsheet program. And honestly would expect the student to suggest it. Maybe there is a realistic reason why someone could object to using a pencil, people have all sorts of beliefs. But it's sad that people have a knee jerk reaction to the idea that people could have moral objections to things they don't, and assume they're just being obstructive for the sake of being obstructive.
2026-08-25 07:34:19
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WhackWang :
1. killing frogs and using generative ai really isn’t all that different 2. shoutout to my bio teacher in missouri who let me write papers instead of doing dissections
2026-08-25 09:14:40
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Mrs. C with a PhD :
Excellent analogy. And you reminded me I almost failed my BIO 101 as I refused to perform 2 mandatory vivisections. I had to argue my moral objections - ended up just getting zeros on those assignments, which brought me down from an A to a B.
2026-08-25 01:26:08
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Taylan :
I just skipped the dissection day of biology. I also went vegetarian to get out of a project where we had to collect dead bugs (or kill alive ones) to identify them because they wouldn’t take me seriously when I said I felt uncomfortable doing it.
2026-08-25 03:06:34
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Rochel Leah Solow :
can someone explain what the ethical dilemma behind pencils is I don't get that one
2026-08-26 02:04:54
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Rubyn！ᡣ𐭩 :
This happened in a philosophy aligned class so it's certainly a different case than your analogy of a frog dissection, but my Theory of Knowledge teacher started this school year off with a short AI unit. During this unit, he asked us to pull up Gemini. Personally, I refuse to use AI. I find that it's making my classmates stupider and it's ruining ecosystems. One day, he came up to me and asked why I wasn't doing what he asked. I told him that I refuse to use AI because there's too many issues stemming from AI for me to just ignore them for the sake of convenience. And he told me (word for word), "I'm not gonna argue with that". Then he walked away. That is what needs to happen. I understand how this may be Gen Z's calculator in our pocket kind of thing, but I refuse to actively participate in growing the demand for environmentally damaging AI centers and I refuse to make myself stupid and unable to think for myself.
2026-08-26 22:17:36
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Dino :
It’s actually very easy to come up with assignments that don’t require AI, it’s called any assignment up until a couple years ago.
2026-08-25 20:13:23
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Austin Beeman | Wine + Travel :
Definitely gave me some interesting things to think about. Cause I understand it, you can refrain from dissecting the frog, but you have to learn the same knowledge and be able to apply the same skills. I wonder if an analogy for AI might be refusing to use a computer in computer class. Because in some instances AI is going to be more like a tool for learning a non-AI topic. But in some classes, learning how to effectively use AI is the point of the class.
2026-08-25 03:02:31
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darkphoenyx27 :
Our current LLM AI technology is antithetical to the very concept of education, but the general public is apparently going to have to find that out the hard way in the next 10 years. In the meantime, I'm just refusing to touch it and filing it as a religious objection. The Vatican was surprisingly on the ball for once. If the school wants to go to court about it, so be it.
2026-08-25 19:35:58
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Jubiluka :
also you could claim religious exemption bc the pope is against it
2026-08-26 14:43:11
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