I was reminded yesterday of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, his lens for thinking about ethics. As I understasnd it, he suggested that to decide if an action is ethical, one can consider the implications if everyone did it. To determine if one ought to lie, one can consider a world in which everyone is allowed to lie; clearly, that's not a good place to live, so it is better not to lie.
This gives me another way to talk to my students about using generative AI on assignments. Would the world be better if all students fed their assignments as prompts to ChatGPT and turned in what it spat out? It is clear to me that this would be a worse educational system. The question remains whether they would agree with me. One might instead argue that the dose makes the poison and that there is no universal around such tools.
Yet, I cannot help but extend the Kantian perspective. Would it be a better educational system if everyone relied on grammar check to alter their prose into a machine-acceptable format? Would it be a better world if everyone delegated spelling authority to algorithms? The answers are clear to me when one considers the categorical imperative, and the principle underlying these questions is humanism. Will my students agree that it is universal?
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