COURSE POLICY ON AI The use of AI will not be permitted on any written materials for this course and any use of it will be considered plagiarism and a violation of CU’s Honor Code (see specifically E. 1. e. and 2. d.). You miss out on honing critical thinking, analytical, and writing skills when you rely on AI generated materials. It is also obvious when you do so due to style, vocabulary, phrasing, and assumptions of knowledge. If your writing is flagged as AI generated you will receive an automatic zero with no opportunity to rewrite your assignment. I have a zero-tolerance policy on the use of AI—it is disrespectful to ask me to use my time to engage a computer’s work. If you need assistance with your writing, please contact CU’s writing center early and often. I am also available to help. I want to hear what YOU think, what YOU care about, what YOU notice, not a computer—YOU are important and so is your voice! (Lillie, Syllabus 2025).
I am in 100% support of Dr. Lillie's policy on Artificial Intelligence. I will not tolerate any usage of AI in any way on these assignments. AI, despite having intelligence in its name, is not intelligent.
As Dr. Luciano Floridi points out, AI is a "divorce between the ability to perform a task successfully in view of a goal...and any need to be intelligent in doing so." (Floridi, Luciano. "AI in Society -- Opportunities and Risks." 11 June, 2019 Oxford Trinity Term London Lecture. Oxford University. Lecture.)
I care about you and your intelligence. It is a wonderful thing to have the ability to dedicate specific time in your life to learning, exploring, questioning, and finding your voice, so I encourage you to use it. Your unique voice, understanding, and contributions are so important to share with the world.
If you need any help with your research from brainstorming your topic, finding library resources to citation help, please reach out. Remember there are many people here who are happy to support you.
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT produce answers to your questions and prompts almost instantaneously, but this is not without cost - energy consumption. In fact one query to ChatGPT "uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes." According to researcher Jesse Dodge who studies AI energy consumption “you can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.” (Kerr, Dara. "AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change," NPR. July 12 2024).