AI: Advice to students
Question 2: Can a student engage in a meaningful dialogue about a text without first having read and struggled with the original text themselves?
When I began my PhD, I assumed that I was expected to read carefully everything I referenced. This troubled me because I found it impossible. I still remember the advice I was given: most papers do not need to be read line by line. You can usually grasp their main point from the abstract, the introduction and a quick skim. But there are a few texts that really do need to be read carefully: texts that do not simply reproduce familiar assumptions but offer something genuinely new. Reading such texts carefully can provide the kind of challenge to conventional thought that students need for intellectual growth.
The danger of turning to AI too early is that it removes precisely this interruption. Instead of first encountering the text in all its difficulty and resistance, the student is presented with an interpretation that reflects what the model predicts people are likely to think. AI can make difficult texts immediately accessible, but in doing so it can deprive students of the productive struggle through which those texts become transformative.
So my answer is a qualified one. Students can often have a useful conversation about a text they have encountered only second-hand. Indeed, much academic work depends on that. But for the relatively small number of texts that have the potential to change how you think, there is no substitute for wrestling with the original yourself.
Question 3: What would a genuinely dialogic use of AI by a humanities student look like?
