When Boston University graduate students went on strike in April, Stan Sclaroff, the university’s dean of arts and sciences, sent faculty an email with suggestions for keeping their classes on track. As Inside Higher Ed reported, the dean’s “creative” solutions included combining discussion sections, alternative assignments, and using “generative AI tools like ChatGPT.” Professors, the dean wrote, could use the technology to “give feedback or facilitate ‘discussion’ on readings or assignments.”
Sclaroff’s suggestion that artificial intelligence (AI) could handle struck work provoked an outcry from grad students and faculty, with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509, which…