At 37, Ashley is juggling motherhood, marriage and full-time school. She’s a Miami girl turned Virginia Beach creative: photographer, graphic designer, artist and muralist. She’s currently serving on the Virginia Beach Public Arts Committee, the Gen MOCA Advisory Board, and teaching with Tidewater Arts Outreach. She’s got plenty to say and even more to learn, so she’s here to listen, create and keep the conversation fresh.
Every semester starts the same way: notebooks, new caffeine habits and the same classroom speech: ‘No ChatGPT, no AI, automatic zero.’ It’s like deploying the smoke detectors before the first match has even been struck.
But ask yourself: Is this “protection” a safeguard for education or just a comfortable illusion that keeps us from facing the challenging yet necessary dawn of a new era ?
We’ve been through this before. The calculator was going to “ruin math.” Google was going to “kill research.” And now, apparently, AI is coming for our critical thinking. There’s always a new villain, but the story never changes. Technology gets smarter and we eventually catch up.
AI isn’t the villain here. It’s the reality check. If the machine can breeze through the work, maybe it’s time we stop blaming the tools and start rethinking the tasks.
Instead of banning it, why not teach it? Professors could show students how to check AI’s facts, challenge its tone and use it as a creative partner instead of a shortcut. Because the truth is students are already using it, just quietly. If universities want to keep up, they could start by integrating AI literacy into existing classes.
Imagine a composition course where students have to compare their own writing with an AI draft. Or, a research class that teaches how to prompt responsibly and verify sources, not just copy and paste whatever sounds convincing.
Even simple changes, like requiring reflection paragraphs on how students use AI or what they learned from it, would shift the focus from punishment to practice.
The goal shouldn’t be to catch students using AI, but to teach them how to use it better, because this technology isn’t going anywhere.
The only question now is whether higher education will keep pretending it’s 2019, or start preparing students for a world that actually exists.
Fear won’t keep up with technology, but understanding might. If education is supposed to prepare us for the real world, it can’t do that by pretending the future doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s time to stop warning students about AI and start figuring out how to work with it. It’s about the moment human instinct and technology move in sync. The students who can question AI, argue with it, remix it and still make it sound human are the ones who will actually understand what learning looks like now. That’s not cheating, that’s evolution with Wi-Fi.
If higher education wants to stay relevant, it needs to take its own advice and adapt. Try the new thing. Get messy. Ask better questions. Because AI isn’t the death of curiosity; it’s proof we still have some left.
By: Ashley Cayon
acayon@vwu.edu