R. Jason LaTurner, 5.21.26
Having started to dance with AI at my previous employer to summarize survey results, I was fascinated to see how college students are interacting with AI. Is it like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey? More like AUTO from WALL‑E? More of a massive source of knowledge like Winston in Dan Brown’s novel Origin? Seeing it as a companion like in the film Her? Was it creepy like Ex Machina? Or more straightforwardly evil, as in The Terminator?
Regardless, I was hoping not to make the use of AI a moral, ethical, or “is this cheating?” sort of deal, and instead go straight to “AI is here — let’s see if it is any good.” As noted, I have used it extensively in previous jobs, and I wanted students to understand that in statistics, data analysis, and business analytics situations, AI can be more of a “come-alongside.”
I’m thinking of the word Paraclete (παράκλητος) that literally means “one called alongside to help.” It is most often used in a theological context — a counselor or advocate who walks beside you, not one who takes over or does the work for you. That is precisely how I wanted students to think about AI in this course. HAL is not here to replace your thinking; it is here to come alongside it. Just as a good tutor doesn’t hand you the answers but helps you find them, AI at its best functions as a thinking partner — available, knowledgeable, and useful, but ultimately dependent on you to steer, question, and judge what it produces.
So, how did we do this? First, I was completely transparent about what I had used AI for and where I still had doubts (it is still not great at some math, and definitely not great at interpreting results). We got to know HAL by literally asking AI who HAL was –
Throughout the semester, I used this HAL icon to identify what I had used AI for and had students at least once a week have a chat with HAL about something.
I also showed them how AI can just not get it right –
From previous semesters it was clear that HAL could give students bad information and faulty interpretations, and I let them use it as much as made sense. I found that by repeatedly discussing its functionality and utility (or lack thereof),
I wanted to ensure they understood it’s a good tool — but don’t fall in love with it like in Her, nor let it take over like Skynet in The Terminator. Instead use it as a tool. and most importantly understand you just can’t trust Hal (at least not all the time) – and had this as a quiz question on multiple occasions.
We did not talk about the power and water consumption nor the potentially adverse effects on learning, but instead focused on the utility of using HAL for business classes with a constant reminder that while HAL has some serious power – it does not always know what it is talking about… AUTO was sure he was doing the right thing in WALL‑E; he was following his directive, just as AI follows ours. As one character analysis of AUTO notes, despite his troubling actions, he isn’t quite a villain — he simply lacked the critical thinking and flexibility that WALL‑E and EVE possessed. (See: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/wall-e/auto.html)
Students did indeed find many ways that AI was a helpful tool, and to their credit, they learned not to always trust HAL blindly. Some of the most useful applications were in generating new ideas, defining and clarifying terms, and — perhaps most visibly — helping to create rich, polished visuals that would have taken far longer to produce on their own.But let’s continue to make sure our students know that sometimes we need to supply the critical thinking, flexibility, and common sense to ensure that what we get from AI is interpreted and used in the best way possible — for us humans, and for EVE and WALL‑E.
