Mehr Anand, a 21-year-old rising senior at Northeastern University in Boston, used to be annoyed that professors prohibited him from using AI in his beginner classes. The computer-science major with an AI concentration now realizes he wouldn't have honed the fundamentals if he had been allowed to use AI back then.
But he believes juniors and seniors in advanced classes should be allowed to use AI "because when you become an upperclassman, companies want to see you actually use these tools," Anand said.
Teachers are now assuming students use AI, so they are assigning harder work - and more of it, he noted. Northeastern University is doing a better job than many schools at incorporating AI in the classroom, Anand believes. And when there are classroom restrictions, hackathons at campus clubs are the way to build sought-after AI skills, he added.
Across schools, the bigger fix would be more precision from administrators on AI do's and don'ts, Anand said. "I would make it a little bit more specific on what AI is allowed, what AI isn't allowed, and teach kids properly how to use AI as a learning system rather than something that does all the work for you," he told MarketWatch.
The challenge is figuring out the here and now.
